


Risking a Paradox

by lastincurableromantic



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who and related fandoms
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:15:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastincurableromantic/pseuds/lastincurableromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Twelfth Doctor sets the TARDIS on random, he and Clara end up in an unlikely place, the Powell Estate. Will the Doctor risk a paradox to see Rose one last time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bittie752](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bittie752/gifts).



> 11/6/15 This morning I discovered the second half of chapter 10 was missing. I've since fixed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a birthday present for my good friend Bittie752. It was begun before her birthday, but as is typical of many of my stories, it has become much longer than expected and the final product will be very late.

**Chapter One**

The twelfth Doctor walked around the console, slowly flipping a switch here and pressing a button there to program in the coordinates to their next destination. There was no hurry; as was typical of most of the people he traveled with, Clara wasn't ready yet. None of his companions had ever been prompt, except Adric possibly, and the Doctor would have been surprised if Clara had been ready. In her defense, part of the reason for her tardiness was that the TARDIS still didn't like her, didn't care for the impossibility of her existence; it would take anyone a while to get dressed if her wardrobe was continually locked or if the door to her en suite disappeared periodically without warning.

His mouth quirked into a small smile, one he immediately forced off his face. No, it was not funny, he told himself. After all Clara had done for him, he should be more sympathetic. He really needed to talk to the TARDIS about how she treated Clara. And he would. Eventually.

He reached across the console to spin a dial that controlled the speed of materialization—he thought—when he got a crick in his neck. Wincing, he stopped to rub it, and then stretched his back. It hadn't been all that long since he had regenerated, and this was the oldest body he had had in centuries. He wasn't used to it yet, not to its weight or height or how it ached occasionally now. Still, it wasn't the worst body he had ever had, nor was it the oldest. He'd get used to it, just like he had all the others. The chin wasn't bad in this one, nor were the ears, and the eyebrows were certainly an improvement over his last body. And the hair… oh, the hair he quite liked. No, it wasn't ginger, and that had been a huge disappointment, but it was nice and thick and he thought the smattering of silver in his hair suited him, particularly after all he had been through. It, together with the lines on his face, gave him a gravitas that he didn't quite have in his last incarnation.

He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it down a bit, and for a moment he wondered again if Rose would have liked it. That was one of the first things he had thought about when he had seen himself in a mirror for the first time after regenerating. She had really liked the hair his tenth body had had, and with good reason. Even he had to admit that that him had had really great hair. But he preferred himself this way. He always did. Every incarnation preferred himself over the previous ones. He just was disappointed that he'd never know what Rose thought.

He found thinking of Rose wasn't as painful as it had been. Oh, it still hurt a bit, and he still missed her every single day, but it wasn't the gaping wound it had been in his tenth life and during a great deal of his eleventh. But at times like these, when something big had happened in his life, and what was bigger than a regeneration after all, he wished she were still there to talk to, to joke with, to hold hands with.

Even after centuries, his hand felt so empty.

"That's not what you're wearing, is it?"

He turned to see Clara standing in the doorway, her arms crossed and her head tilted to one side. She had her lips pressed together disapprovingly.

"Of course it's what I'm wearing," he said crossly. "You can see that I'm wearing it. I'm standing right in front of you."

"I thought we had talked about this." She tapped her toe and looked at him pointedly. For a moment he was reminded of her governess persona. All she needed was a long Victorian gown and a feathery cap instead of the very short dress and knee high boots she was wearing. She must have gotten her wardrobe open, he thought absently.

He scowled at her.

"There is nothing wrong with what I'm wearing. And it's certainly better than what I have chosen to wear before."

"Which time?" she asked. "Because if you mean when you were in your sixth body, I'd have to agree with you."

His mouth twitched. "No. No striped lemon-yellow pants, no jacket that resembles a patchwork quilt, no floppy, polka-dotted bowtie… No bowtie at all, actually."

Her mouth twisted into a small, teasing grin. "You used to say that bowties were cool."

He shuddered and made a face. "What on Earth could I have been thinking?"

"That's what I wondered at first," she said dryly. "And then I decided that you weren't."

He shot her a look before turning back to face the console.

"So where are we headed now?" she asked.

Clara's boots clicked on the floor as she walked across the console room and down the stairs to join him. The Doctor was staring thoughtfully into the glowing display screen that was built into the console. She looked curiously at it, trying to understand what he saw in it, but as usual it told her nothing. It was filled with the circles, triangles and other geometric shapes that formed the Doctor's written language and that only he could read.

He paused for a moment, and then he quickly began to reset all the dials he had adjusted earlier. "I think I'll set it at random," he told her. "I haven't done that for a while. Well, at least not in this body." He reached over to another section of the console and flipped a few additional switches.

A worried look crossed her face. "Doctor, are you sure that's a good idea? Every time you've done that in the past it has ended up in a disaster."

"Not _every_ time," he countered.

She opened her mouth to argue, but before she could come up with a rejoinder the TARDIS began to make its familiar wheezing and groaning noises. They ended with a loud thud.

"Oh, look. We've arrived already," he said. "Shall we go see where we are?"

Clara was extremely tempted. The Doctor and danger went hand in hand, but there was so much to see out there in the universe. That's part of the reason why she was with him, after all, to walk on new ground, see new stars, meet new people… She bit her lower lip and glanced at the door before looking back at him.

"Or you could stay here while I go," he suggested with a shrug. "Suit yourself."

She looked at the door again and her curiosity got the best of her.

"Oh, all right," she said with a deep sigh. Decision made, she crossed the room purposefully, flung open the doors and stepped outside.

The TARDIS had landed in a deserted alley between two tall buildings which appeared to contain flats. Although the Doctor and Clara stood in the shadows, overhead the sky was a bright blue, and the distant sound of children laughing filled the air. She nodded her head decisively.

"So far, so good," she said. "So we're obviously on a planet, rather than a ship or a space station or something, and it's one similar to Earth. Bright, sunny day, not too warm, not too cool… What do you think, Doctor? Where are we?"

She turned to the Doctor. He stood motionless for a moment, a look of shock on his face. Wordlessly he strode away from her and rounded a corner, disappearing from view. This was so totally unlike him, she thought. He had always liked to impress her with his vast knowledge of everywhere they went, even after he had changed, and he obviously knew where they were. Why wasn't he trying to show off? Clara followed him, her brow furrowed in puzzlement.

As she rounded the corner, she almost bumped into him. He stood frozen, all coiled tension, looking at a park that lay directly ahead. Its adjacent playground was full of children.

The Doctor stared intently across the wide expanse of grass. On the far edge of the park stood two people, a young blonde woman and a man who appeared slightly older than she did, who were deep in conversation. The man, who was wearing a brown pinstriped suit and who had artfully messy brown hair, was pulling on one of his ears, while the woman, in jeans and a bright pink top with her hair in a tiny ponytail, stood with her arms folded in front of her. Even though he couldn't see it from where he stood, the Doctor knew she was frowning.

Thankfully Clara hadn't noticed the two on the other side of the park, he thought. He needed to deal with the situation before a paradox was created, and preferably without Clara knowing. Not that Clara knowing would be a crisis. He just wanted to handle it without her getting involved.

He and Clara really ought to just get into the TARDIS and leave, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"Doctor, what is it?" she asked.

"Clara, find out where, or specifically when, we are," he said, still watching the pair on the other side of the park. He already knew exactly where and when they were, but sending her away to find out would keep her busy for a while. Hopefully.

"How…"

"There's a newsagent back the way we came." A tone of mild irritation had crept into his voice. "Go look there."

Clara opened her mouth to speak, and then thought better of it. She had learned in the short time she had spent traveling with this Doctor that there were some times that it did no good to argue with him. But that wasn't to say that she couldn't let him know how she felt. With a huff of exasperation that she knew he heard, even though he didn't acknowledge it, she turned and walked back in the direction of the TARDIS.

Once the Doctor was certain she had gone, he slowly crossed the grass that lay in front of him. The man, his Tenth self, had left, headed to his TARDIS he remembered. Rose, on the other hand, for of course it was Rose, had gone the opposite direction and had sat down on a bench near the playground to watch the children.

This was a bad idea. It would only serve to open old wounds. Wounds, he realized, that weren't nearly as healed as he had thought. He shouldn't do this, he told himself. He should return to the TARDIS and leave immediately. But he had never seen her with these eyes before, and the temptation to see her again was too great. Entirely unable to stop himself, he continued forward.

Why, of all the possible places and times in the universe the TARDIS could have landed them, had she chosen here?

And then his mind returned to something the TARDIS had said when she was in the form of Idris.

"You don't always take me where I want to go," he whispered, "but you always take me where I need to go."

But why on Earth did he need to come here?

When he reached the bench where she sat, he saw she was sitting quietly, staring ahead of her at nothing in particular. Her shoulders were a bit slumped and her face held an unreadable expression. He sat down on the same bench, careful to sit as far from her as was possible. He longed to sit next to her, to put his arm around her and pull her into his side as he had so many times in the past, but he knew he couldn't. Even sitting this close to her was a risk, but a relatively minor one. Although he knew her, she didn't know him; he was just an older man, a stranger, sitting on the park bench near her.

And he couldn't resist one last time being near her.

Rose glanced out of the corner of her eye at the man that had sat down next to her. Much older than she was, much older than her mother, in fact, she had seen him emerge from the alley accompanied by a very pretty young woman with long dark hair. Probably his daughter, she thought, and perhaps he had grandchildren playing on the play equipment in front of him. That was nice. She really hadn't known her grandparents all that well, and she didn't think they had ever accompanied her to a park.

The Doctor glanced at her… and she caught him at it. To his relief, she smiled at him. No, it wasn't her tongue-touched flirtatious grin she used to use with him, but it was a smile.

"Hello," she said.

"Hello," he replied, smiling back. He forced himself not to make it an all-out grin.

They both turned back to watch the playground. After a few moments she turned back to him.

"I'm Rose, Rose Tyler."

He hesitated for no more than a split second as he ran through all the names he had used while they had been traveling together. He had used most of the names of his male companions around her at one point or another… "Harry," he answered as he turned to face her. "Harry Sullivan."

"Nice to meet you, Harry."

Rose thrust out her hand at him. After a moment's hesitation, he moved closer to shake it.

"The pleasure is all mine, Rose," he replied.

When he took her hand, Rose felt a jolt of… something. Almost a shock of recognition, but that wasn't possible, was it? She didn't know him. And he certainly wasn't from the Powell Estate, not with his accent. She couldn't quite place it, but it was certainly more posh than everyone else around here. She peered at him.

"I'm sorry, but do I know you?" she asked.

His hearts rate shot up, but he didn't allow it to reflect in his expression. "I don't think so. Why?"

"'S just, you seem familiar somehow," she said. She shook her head as if to shake the thought out of her mind. "'S probably nothing."

The Doctor smiled again and then forced himself to turn away. This was not good. He shouldn't be here, he shouldn't have let her see him, and he certainly shouldn't be talking to her. But it had never occurred to him that she could recognize him on some level. Well, his Rose had always been extraordinary. He extended his Time Sense to try to determine if there had been any damage to the timelines. Seeing his own was difficult but not impossible, and he seemed to have a better talent for it in this body than in most of his others. After scanning it for damage, inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief. Thankfully, there had been none.

So far, a little voice inside his head said.

Rose turned back to watching the children. The TARDIS had been damaged during their recent trip through the Void. The Doctor was off trying to repair her, and she knew she'd just get in his way. And she didn't want to go back to her mum's flat; after a couple of days of being back on the estate, her mother was driving her spare. She was only sitting in the park because she had nowhere else to go now that Mickey was gone.

After a moment she turned back to her bench mate.

"So that girl you were with, was she your daughter?"

"Who, Clara?" he asked, turning back to her. He was surprised. He hadn't thought she'd noticed them when they'd emerged from the alley. "No, she's not my daughter. She's just a friend."

"Oh." She smirked. "I've heard that before."

He blinked and hurriedly shook his head. "No. It's nothing like that."

"'S alright, y'know," she said. "'S a bit of an age gap, but I've known bigger ones."

He snorted. _Maybe not bigger, but close to_ , he thought. "No, really. She's just a friend."

She smiled disbelievingly and turned back to the playground. He should really go, he told himself again.

After a moment her smile faded. He knew that expression on her face. She wasn't just thoughtful; she was sad. And if there were anything he couldn't bear, it was seeing Rose Tyler sad.

"I'm sorry if this is a bit forward, and you certainly don't have to answer, but is everything alright?"

She bit her lip and crossed her arms, hugging herself.

"Yeah, 'm fine," Rose answered, turning towards him again. To her surprise, he looked genuinely concerned. What the hell, she thought. She needed to talk, and she couldn't talk to the Doctor or her mum. And there was no one else, not anymore. Maybe it would be good to talk to a stranger, get some perspective from someone who didn't know her and didn't know the situation or the people involved. She moved a little closer to him to talk a bit more privately.

"No, 'm not fine," she corrected herself. "Things have just been a bit tough recently, y'know?"

"Does it have anything to do with that boyfriend of yours?" he asked. She looked puzzled. "The man you were with. I saw you talking to him earlier."

"Oh, no, we're not like that," she said. "He's just a friend."

"Really?" He raised his eyebrows. "You could have fooled me. I saw the way he looked at you."

Rose shook her head. "Nah, he doesn't think of me that way. At one time I thought… well, let's just say I found out the hard way I was wrong. But that's fine," she said hurriedly. "'S just, we went through some tough times. Me an' him and another friend of mine were travelin' together, and some really bad things happened."

She was being purposefully vague because how on Earth could she explain to Harry that the man he had seen her talking to had left her and Mickey on a spaceship in the far future not once but twice: once to attend a party while they almost get killed by clockwork robots, and the second to jump through a time window—on a horse no less—with no plan on how he would return to them. And then immediately after that how they had gotten stuck in a parallel universe only to see her parallel mum get killed and her parallel dad reject her? Harry'd think she needed to be sectioned.

"Anyway," she continued, "my other friend, Mickey, his name is Mickey, he stayed behind. We've known each other forever, and I'm not gonna ever see him again." She drew in a ragged breath and jerked her head in the direction of the TARDIS. "And he doesn't seem to care."

She was horrified to find her eyes well up with tears. She sniffed, trying not to cry, and turned away. "You don't need to hear about all this," she said.

"Rose."

She turned back to him to find he had moved a bit closer to her again and was holding out an old fashioned handkerchief. She took it gratefully and dabbed at her eyes. "'M sorry. I'm a bit of a mess."

"It's alright to cry if you need to," he said gently. "And I'm sure he does care; I bet he just doesn't know how to express it."

She rolled her eyes and chuckled a little. "Yeah, that'd be him all over."

He smiled in response, until he heard what she said next.

"Anyway, he's gonna wanna go again, and I'm just not sure I can go with this time."

His hearts skipped a beat and he felt a chill run down his spine.

"'S just, I need a break, yeah?" she continued, returning to looking in front of her. "But if I don't go with him, I don't think I'll ever see him again either. He's not one for comin' back." She took a deep breath. "But maybe I'll just have to risk it."

He stared at her with a look akin to horror. He had known she had thought about leaving after the business with Sarah Jane and then again after Reinette. But how had he not known she felt this way after their foray into Pete's World? But she didn't leave him, he told himself.

Just to be safe, he checked the timelines again and was shocked to find that the line, which had been firm when they had begun talking, was now softening. If it continued like this it would go into full flux, and then no one, not even he, could predict what would happen.

She could leave.

But would that be such a bad thing? If she left him, the old him, perhaps she'd never be trapped in Pete's World.

But she wouldn't be with him, he reminded himself. And she wouldn't be with his meta-crisis self either. The thought of her happy in the parallel universe with his other, part human self sometimes had been all that sustained him through times of despair.

"Have you tried talking to your friend about this?" he asked carefully.

"Not really," she answered. "He doesn't do feelings very well. 'S a bit too domestic for him, if you know what I mean."

"I think so," he replied ruefully. And when she turned to face him, he grinned at her.

His smile took years off, and Rose wondered to herself if somehow she had misjudged his age. Some people looked older than they were, others looked far younger. The Doctor was one of the second, but of course he was a special case. Who else was almost a thousand years old yet looked like he was barely out of his twenties? With his sharp features, greying hair and lined face, she had assumed Harry was older than her father would be if he had lived, but maybe he wasn't. Perhaps he was one of those who was younger than he looked. Either way, young or old, he had a wonderful smile. It lit up his entire face. He was really quite handsome, she realized, particularly when he smiled.

Once again she was struck with the sense that she knew him somehow. No, she had never seen him before, she was sure of that. His features were a bit too distinctive, too memorable, for her to have forgotten him. But there was something about his smile. And his eyes. If his smile made him look younger than he was, his steely blue eyes made him look far older. They reminded her of the Doctor's eyes, particularly her first Doctor; his eyes looked as if he had traveled too far and had seen too much, and as if he had the wisdom of the universe behind them.

She stared at him, and his smile faded as he met her gaze. Even after crying, she was breathtaking, he thought; the sunlight caught in her light blonde hair, making it appear to almost glow, and her flawless skin was just slightly pink from their time sitting on the bench in the sun. And how could he possibly have forgotten how beautiful her eyes were? Because they were: whiskey-colored with flecks of gold that made him recall her time as Bad Wolf.

He took a deep breath and looked away for a moment. Before he did something incredibly stupid, he thought, he needed to leave. Now.

But he didn't.

Instead, he turned back to her. "If you want my advice, which you probably don't," he said with a wink, "you should go talk to him. He just might surprise you."

"I doubt it," she replied. "But you're right. I should at least go talk to him. I mean, what's the worst he could do? Kick me off the TAR—I mean, kick me to the kerb? I was thinkin' about leavin' anyway." She grinned at him. "Actually, talkin' to you has really helped. I feel a lot better. Thank you." And she leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.

And then something happened that Rose would have sworn only happened in the movies. At that very moment he moved. They both froze and stared at each other wide-eyed as her lips met his. She should pull away, she thought. She didn't do this, kiss random strangers in the park of the estate. What would he think of her? Any moment now he would pull away and she would be even more embarrassed than she had been earlier.

But he wasn't pulling away.

Instead his eyes closed and his lips softened under hers. And instead of pulling away, she closed her eyes and leaned closer.

It was soft and sweet and gentle and over far too soon. When he finally did pull away, she opened her eyes to find him staring at her, a look of longing on his face. It should have scared her, for someone who was basically a stranger to look at her like that, but it didn't. And then all of a sudden she knew.

"Doctor?" she whispered.

"Hello, Rose," he answered.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been slightly edited to correct the date.

The tenth Doctor walked swiftly away from the park in the direction of the TARDIS. He had known Rose was upset, and rightly so. It had been a difficult few weeks culminating with Mickey deciding to stay in the parallel universe. That had been a shock to both of them. More to Rose, of course. She had known Mickey most of her life, had even been dating him when they had met. Still, as painful as it was to leave people behind, he recognized that Mickey had made the right decision. It had taken a great amount of courage to remain in Pete's World to continue the fight against the Cybermen, and by making that choice Mickey would never again be Mickey the Idiot. Or the tin dog. And the Doctor was certain Rose would eventually realize that.

While they had been crossing the Void, Rose had been so distraught that he had immediately set coordinates for the Powell Estate, knowing she had needed to spend some time with her mum. He had somehow managed to land the TARDIS right in the center of Jackie's flat, despite the damage to her, and then he had taken off again to move her to the courtyard outside the building. But short hops were often the most difficult, and he had landed several blocks away instead.

As soon as the TARDIS was parked, he had begun to assess the damage she had sustained. There was enough damage in enough of her systems that it warranted grounding her awhile. That wasn't all bad; he knew Rose needed an extended visit with Jackie and grounding the TARDIS gave him an excuse to stay on the Estate.

But after spending several days letting the TARDIS rest and trying to make repairs to a variety of her systems, she was still acting up and was still not ready to leave. Her engines refused to start. He had considered himself lucky by managing to stay within the same time when he had moved her, and he now realized he'd been lucky he'd even been able to move her from Jackie's flat at all. Her dematerialization circuit was cracked, and the Time Rotor was now frozen in place. That added to everything else meant that they'd be grounded even longer than he had originally thought they would be.

But then, to his shock, while he had been talking to Rose in the park that morning he had heard the TARDIS engines seemingly start and stop on their own. With the damage she had taken crossing the Void, anything was possible, he told himself, even the TARDIS taking off by herself. Even more troubling was that the sound had seemed to come from the opposite direction of where he had parked her. But he couldn't be certain that that's where the sound had originated. Sounds could bounce off tall buildings much as it did among mountains, he reminded himself. He had probably just heard an echo from the sound bouncing off the buildings of the Estate. It didn't mean she had actually moved. Still, hearing it at all was troubling, so he had abruptly ended the conversation with Rose and immediately headed back to the TARDIS.

The TARDIS was dark when he entered. He had left her powered down to conserve energy and to give her time to heal, but still he was surprised by how quiet she was. It was always startling to walk into the console room and not see the blue-green glow of the time rotor or not hear the quiet hum of the engines. Not to mention that he had been certain he had heard her. So he checked and double-checked and triple-checked her settings. In between times he climbed under the console to check the dematerialization circuit—it was still broken—and the main control relay and the vortex spectrometer and the wiring to each of them. And he found nothing that could explain the TARDIS suddenly deciding to start up on her own.

He climbed under the console of the TARDIS to check its circuitry once again. He traced the line that led from the controls on the console through the temporal relay on to the magnotomic thrust activator and off to the engines. Then he looked at the quantum manipulator and the master dematerialization cutoff switch. And as it had looked the last three times he had checked, nothing appeared to be wrong. But there must be, he thought.

He climbed back out and ran his hands through his hair in frustration as he began to pace back and forth. The only sounds were those of his footfalls across the metal grating that made up the floor of the console room. He knew what he had heard while in the park. There was no other sound like the TARDIS in the universe. And he had heard the TARDIS.

There weren't any other TARDISes, not anymore, but even if there had been, they each had a slightly different sound on taking off and landing. Even if there were a thousand TARDISes rematerializing simultaneously, he'd be able to pick his own out by sound alone.

The Doctor crossed over to the console and ran his hand along one edge.

"So what's going on, old girl?" he asked.

~oOo~

Clara retraced her steps. The Doctor was acting so oddly. It could be as an effect of his regeneration, she reminded herself. It had only been slightly over a week ago after all, hardly enough time to settle into a new body and a new personality. He was bound to be a bit erratic.

And she was just getting to know the new him as well. The old him, the one she had traveled with, had been bouncy and manic and a bit flirty with her, but the instant he had changed her relationship with him had changed. Oh, it hadn't been his looks, she wasn't quite that shallow, but they had fallen into more of a father/daughter relationship, more best friends rather than… whatever they had been, and she was perfectly happy with that relationship.

Well, despite his uncharacteristic behavior, doing what he had asked her to do really couldn't hurt, she told herself, unless he got himself into trouble while she was gone. And of course with the Doctor, that was always a risk wherever they were. No matter what regeneration he was on.

And Clara was certain he knew exactly where they were. It was probably Earth. It might not be, but it looked like Earth, it smelled like Earth, it just felt like Earth to her for some reason. But when was the real question, and at least she could help by finding that out.

Passing the TARDIS, she continued down the narrow alley until she reached a small courtyard between several of the buildings. Frowning with her hands on her hips, she looked around.

"Block of flats, block of flats, Chinese takeaway, community center, but no newsagent," she said aloud. "But the Doctor was so certain there was one here. Where could it be?"

She crossed the courtyard and headed out through an alley on the other side. She emerged on a busy street next to a mechanic's shop. Wrinkling her nose at the heavy scents of petrol and motor oil, she looked around at the shops trying to spot somewhere she could find a newspaper. She should just ask someone what the date was, she told herself. But despite all the cars, there were very few people on the pavement. There was a chippie across from her that wasn't open yet. Same for the pizza place next to it. She could go ask one of the mechanics, she thought, but they all seemed busy, and she didn't like the way one of them was leering at her over the engine of one of the cars being repaired.

She continued to look around. Down the street a bit, a few doors down from the pizza place was a launderette. Oh, and just beyond that, there was a newsagent.

Dodging traffic, Clara made her way across the road and down the pavement. She was so focused on her goal she bumped into a woman emerging from the launderette. She was carrying a large laundry basket overflowing with folded clothing, and it spilled all over the pavement.

"Oh, I am so sorry," Clara said quickly, helping the woman pick up the clothes.

"'S all right," the woman responded. "'M not in any hurry." She picked up a stack of track suits in a variety of pastel colors and shoved them into her basket. "I'm Jackie, by the way."

"Clara. Nice to meet you." Now on her hands and knees, Clara picked up a pair of leopard spotted knickers and a zebra striped bra off the ground and tucked them into the side of the basket.

"Thanks for your help," Jackie said. "I wouldn't even be doin' all this except my daughter and her friend got home a couple of days ago and when I was doin' her stuff the washer broke. But can himself find a minute or two to fix it? No, so I'm stuck comin' down here to do my own clothes. But I can't complain, because at least she's home. She doesn't get home nearly often enough to suit me."

They both stood up. Jackie picked up her laundry basket and turned to leave, and Clara stopped her.

"Excuse me," she said, "but can you tell me what day it is?"

"It's Wednesday," Jackie told her.

"Oh," Clara said. "No. I actually meant, what's today's date?"

"Dunno. Let me think. Friday was Bev's birthday, and that's the 18th, so this must be," Jackie did some calculations in her head, "the 23rd of May." She turned to leave again, and again Clara stopped her.

"I'm sorry. This might sound a little odd, but can you tell me what year it is?"

"It's 2007." Jackie looked at her curiously. "Do you know my daughter Rose?"

Clara blinked. She shook her head. "No, I don't think so. Why?"

"Cos that sounds like somethin' my daughter's friend would ask," she answered. "He's always braggin' about knowin' everythin', but he can't keep track of what year it is."

Clara snorted. "Sounds like a friend of mine. We should introduce them."

Jackie laughed. "Nah, if he's anythin' like my daughter's friend, the world would probably blow up."

~oOo~

The sounds of the park around them faded into the background as Rose stared wide-eyed at the man seated on the bench next to her.

"But… but…" She glanced over her shoulder, in the direction her Doctor had headed only minutes earlier, before she turned back to him.

Closing the remaining distance between them, he took hold of both of her hands and placed them flat on either side of his chest. Underneath her palms she could feel the telltale beats of both of his hearts.

Dropping her hands into her lap, her heart pounding in her ears, she searched his face. Despite the wrinkles and the silver in his hair, she realized she could see both of the Doctors she had known in him. The sharp, angular planes of his face reminded her of the Doctor she traveled with, but the stormy blue of his eyes… they were her first Doctor, full of depth and hidden pain.

"It's really you?" she whispered.

He nodded. "Yes, it's really me."

"You've regenerated," Rose said unnecessarily.

The Doctor nodded again. "Twice actually."

Her eyes widened. "If you've regenerated twice, how long's it been since…"

"Since we traveled together? Hundreds of years," he said quietly.

"So, that girl you were with, Clara was it? You travel with her now?"

He shrugged noncommittally. "Some," he said. "It hasn't been that long since I regenerated, and during my last one, most of the time I didn't travel full-time with people. I'd come and go a lot. I don't know if I'm like that anymore. Too soon to say."

"But how… why are you here?"

"I'm not certain actually. The TARDIS landed us here on her own. Normally she refuses to land someplace where we already are."

She shook her head. "You shouldn't be here, should you? Aren't you risking changing time or a paradox or something just by talking to me?"

"A little," he admitted. "Possibly. But I am a Time Lord, Rose. I should be able to prevent damage to the timelines if I'm careful."

"That doesn't sound like you… taking a risk like that."

"I'm the same man, but I've been through a lot since I... well, since we traveled together. And in that time I've realized that sometimes you have to take risks if the reason is important enough.''

"And talking to me is important enough?" she asked incredulously.

"You're important enough."

Rose stared at him in disbelief. So much about all of this didn't make sense to her. The Doctor, a future Doctor, risking a paradox just being here, just to talk to her… Why would he do that? She quickly ran through in her mind everything they had talked about when she had still thought his name was Harry, before she had realized he was the Doctor. They said hello, she asked if Clara was his daughter, he asked about her boyfriend…

"Hang on. Just a minute ago you called the Doctor, him—yourself—my boyfriend. We aren't like that."

"Aren't we?" he asked mildly.

"But you don't feel that way about me," she protested.

"Don't I?"

He looked intently at her, and Rose stared back at him, utterly flabbergasted. It was as if with his words her entire world had shifted on its axis. She turned away from him to look around the Estate. She was surprised to find it looked perfectly normal, the way it always looked. She had somehow expected it to look different, as different as the Doctor was, as different as her whole life now seemed to her.

And then all of a sudden she remembered something else.

"You… you kissed me," she blurted out.

"You kissed me first," he returned.

"Yeah, but that was an accident. I was aimin' for your cheek," she told him. "You did it on purpose."

The Doctor didn't answer immediately.

"So I did," he said slowly. "And you responded."

"Yeah," she admitted after a moment.

"I'd like to do it again," he said in a low voice.

Her eyes dropped to his mouth. Unconsciously she licked her lips. "Yeah, me too."

Both hearts pounding, the Doctor gently cupped her cheek in one hand. He hesitated, just for a moment. What was he doing? This was a terrible idea. It was wrong. He needed to leave before he split the timeline entirely, possibly risking his very existence. If he changed things now, he might not ever meet Clara in his Eleventh life, and if he didn't, she wouldn't be able to save him in all his incarnations. He might not have lived until his Ninth incarnation to meet Rose. He might have chosen the wrong TARDIS and never have come to Earth at all.

Again he scanned the timelines in his mind. They were bending, twisting out of shape.

And he couldn't bring himself to care.

A voice from long ago echoed in his mind. _Think about it, Doctor. One last day with your beloved. Which day would you choose?_

 _Today,_ he thought. _I would pick today._

And then, knowing he was risking everything, he quickly closed the distance between them.

~oOo~

As the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS, he knew something was wrong. He felt an odd sensation, an echo, in the back of his mind. It was as if somehow the TARDIS was both behind him and in front of him at the same time. More than that, it was almost as if he were in two places at once as well. It was an odd sensation, one he had had only a handful of times in the past, and always when he had crossed his own time stream. But he hadn't done that here, had he?

No, of course not. Jackie would have said something when they had arrived if they were already there.

But still…

His skin crawled as the odd feeling grew stronger.

"My timeline's changing. But what could do that?" he whispered to himself. His eyes widened in fear. "Oh, no. Rose." And he raced back to the park.

~oOo~

The kiss was slow and lingering. It was still just a press of their lips, no more, but this time had held an undercurrent of passion that hadn't been present in the first. As they broke apart, Rose was breathless.

The Doctor searched her face, this time noticing faint circles under her eyes, put there by stress and sleepless nights. Put there by him. His younger self perhaps, but still him. And he knew what was still coming for her. An attack which left her mind and her face gone. A struggle on an impossible planet which left her in fear for her life even after it was over.

A desolate beach and a parting that would leave her, the both of them, in grief.

And a journey across universes that would end with an impossible choice.

She was right. She needed a break to heal so that she would be strong enough to handle what was ahead.

"Come with me," he said impulsively, mindless of the risks.

"What?" she gasped in surprise.

"Just for a holiday, a break," he said. "I can have you back five minutes after you've left."

Rose shook her head. "We can't."

"Yes, we can."

She looked at him searchingly, wanting to believe him. After a moment, she shook her head.

"I can't."

"Just one day," he urged, surprising himself by his recklessness. Was this the kind of man he was this time around? Reckless?

Rose was so tempted, so tempted to get to know this new Doctor, so tempted to go with him. But it was wrong.

"I can't," she told him. "What about your friend Clara? What about… him?"

"They won't even know we've been gone."

"You've said that before," she said. "Twelve months instead of twelve hours. A hundred years off from the Ian Dury concert."

"I'm a much better driver than I was." He was lying through his teeth, and he suspected that she knew it. But he could see in her face how much she wanted to believe him.

Suddenly he could sense an echo in his mind… his younger self had left his TARDIS and was heading towards them. And Clara would be back any moment.

"One day, Rose," he said. "Just twenty-four hours."

With his words, his Time Sense flared to life. They were in the eye of a hurricane, the timelines swirling, shifting around them, all hinging on the choice she'd make.

His younger self was coming; Clara was coming. They would try to stop him. He stood up and faced her.

"Rose, you have to decide now," he said urgently. "Stay or go, it's your choice, but decide now."

She bit her lip and anxiously looked back in the direction of her TARDIS. And then she turned back to him.

The Doctor was holding out his hand. His face was a mask of indifference, but his eyes pleaded with her.

She reached out and took his hand, and he slowly began to smile.

"Run," he said.

And they ran.


	3. Chapter 3

As the tenth Doctor ran back to the park where he had left Rose, he felt an increasing sense of a disruption in his timeline and an ever increasing sense of wrongness. Whatever was happening hadn't affected him yet, but he was certain that it would soon.

When he got to the park, she wasn't there. He had thought, had been certain, she would be. She was staying at the flat with her mother while the TARDIS was recovering; well, technically they both were staying there, but since he didn't need to sleep, he was in the TARDIS most of the time trying to repair her. He had been returning every morning to have breakfast with Rose and Jackie—even Jackie couldn't ruin a fry-up—and this morning Rose had mentioned she wanted to get away from the flat for a bit. She had accompanied him as far as the park and then had stayed behind as he returned to the TARDIS.

_Where could she be_ , he asked himself. She wouldn't have gone out to eat as they had just eaten, and it was too early for lunch anyway. Besides, the chippy was closed at this hour of the morning.

He scanned the park again. Children too young for school played in the playground, their mothers hovering close by. An elderly couple sat on a bench under a tree at the far end of the park. There was someone of indeterminate gender walking a dog on the pavement heading in the direction of Jackie's building. And in the distance he could hear the sounds of a radio playing whatever was currently trendy in music.

_She must have changed her mind and returned to the flat_ , he thought. He hoped. The disquiet of a disturbed timeline concerned him. As the effects trickled through his timeline, it would eventually have an effect on him, and there was no telling what effect it could have on Rose. Feeling the overwhelming need to be sure she was alright, he began to cross the park, headed to Jackie's flat.

~oOo~

Hand in hand, the twelfth Doctor and Rose ran down the alley to the TARDIS. Once there, she stared at it as he unlocked the door. It was the TARDIS, no doubt about it; it was a blue Police Box, but it looked different somehow, in some way she couldn't put her finger on. Before she could figure out what it was, he got the door open, pulled her inside and slammed it behind her.

Rose gaped at the unfamiliar room. She had known that the TARDIS could change her interior—after all, Sarah Jane had mentioned it when she had entered the TARDIS—but Rose hadn't realized just how drastically it could change. Her TARDIS console room truly looked as if it had been grown, with glowing coral walls, coral struts with tree-like branches, and a mushroom shaped central console. But this… this was all flashing lights and shiny metal. The changes were staggering.

The Doctor had left her at the door and was now rushing around the console—at least that had stayed the same—flipping levers and pushing the buttons that Rose knew would send them into the vortex. After he had spun the last dial and flipped the last switch, the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing echoed through the room and he turned to her, a wide grin on his face. Despite the changes to the TARDIS, despite the changes to him, Rose knew that grin. It was the same happy, slightly manic grin that her first Doctor had had and that her current Doctor frequently wore. As always, she found it infectious.

She grinned back.

~oOo~

Since Clara and Jackie were headed in the same direction, they walked together. Clara still felt guilty about knocking Jackie's clothes all over the pavement, so she had offered to carry the laundry, and Jackie had immediately thrust it at her.

When they reached the courtyard, Clara handed Jackie back her basket, but before Jackie took more than two steps towards her building, she stopped and turned back to her.

"Sure I can't get you to come up and have a cuppa with me?" she asked.

"I'd love to," Clara said sincerely. In the few moments they had known each other they had hit it off. She wasn't quite sure why; perhaps it was because Jackie talked so affectionately about her daughter, and Clara missed her own mother. And after the last few weeks she and the Doctor had had, which had culminated in his regeneration, having a quiet, normal visit with a person who didn't know the Doctor and wasn't involved with aliens or spaceships that were temperamental and smaller on the outside was very appealing.

"But I really can't," she continued. "I need to find my friend. I've got to make sure he's not getting into trouble. But maybe a little later if that's okay."

"That's fine," Jackie responded. "Number 48. I'll be home all day. And my daughter should be back in a bit; I think the two of you would really hit it off."

As Jackie headed towards her building, Clara heard the unmistakable wheezing and groaning of the TARDIS dematerializing. They both started and then automatically turned towards the sound.

"Did you hear that?" she asked before she could stop herself.

"No," Jackie answered, a little too quickly to be believable. "No, I didn't hear anythin'. Why, did you think you heard somethin'?"

"No," Clara said hurriedly. "No, I guess I didn't hear anything either."

They stared at each other suspiciously for a moment before Jackie turned back to her building. As soon as she had entered the door, Clara took off towards the alley, yelling for the Doctor.

Meanwhile, as the Doctor was walking across the park, he heard the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing, and this time he was certain it was coming from the alley next to Jackie's building. He ran flat out, only to find the alley empty.

Clara rounded the corner of the building and stopped short. The TARDIS was gone, and in its place a man was wandering around. A man with wild brown hair. And wearing a brown pinstriped suit. And scanning the area with a sonic screwdriver.

"Oh, this is so not good," she said under her breath and ducked back out of the alley.

Hearing someone call him, the Doctor turned only to see young woman wearing a short, colorful dress and with long brown hair rush into the alley and rush back out again.

"Wait, wait!" he yelled. He raced after her and caught up with her in the courtyard, where she had been hiding in a stairwell.

"Why did you run?" he demanded. She looked away from him evasively. His eyes narrowed as he continued. "And why did you call me? I don't know you. Do you know me?"

"NO!" she lied. "No, I don't know who you are."

"You're lying. You aren't very good at it," he told her and then his eyes widened as the penny dropped. "You must know me in my future. Which explains why I've been feeling that odd sense of an echo. I was here. And I did hear the TARDIS, but not my TARDIS. There were two TARDISes. Well, one actually, one from the present, one from the future. But why would I do this? Why would I cross my own timeline? And why would the TARDIS let me? Usually she would prevent something like this happening. And if I know you in the future, do you travel with me?"

"You know I can't tell you that," she replied nervously.

"Which means you do," he said. "Who are you?"

Well, that sounded like a safe question. She thought. She hoped. "Clara."

"Clara," he said. "So Clara, if you travel with me, why would I leave you behind? And here of all places?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. You sent me off to find out where and when we were."

"I must have been trying to get rid of you, because there is no way I wouldn't know where I was. Rose's mother lives here."

"Rose?" she asked in confusion. "Oh, Rose! You're traveling with Rose! Oh, this is so, so not good."

"Yes, of course I'm traveling with Rose," he said. "Why? And what does this all have to do with Rose?"

~oOo~

After they had taken off in the TARDIS, the twelfth Doctor turned and grinned at Rose. And she grinned back, the tip of her tongue just touching her teeth. Oh, it was a smile he had missed. A smile he'd thought he'd never see again.

"So," he said. "What do you think?"

Rose could tell he was trying for nonchalance, but his tone was excited and hopeful. He was like a little kid, one who had drawn a picture and was showing it off. _No matter how different he seems, he's still the same man deep down_ , she told herself and it was never more evident than now.

Putting a serious expression on her face, she looked around the room. It was so different. With the multiple levels, the flashing lights, the additional doors leading deeper into the TARDIS, it was almost unrecognizable. The hexagonal, metal console didn't have jerry-rigged controls, and there were additional controls on the railing surrounding the console area. And then there was the Gallifreyan writing. It was everywhere; of course it was on the displays, but it was also on the walls, on the upper part of the Time Rotor, on the door frame…

"It's very…" she began and then paused as if she were deeply considering the matter, "Spock. It's very Spock."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," he said, looking around the room. "But it is, isn't it?" He expected her to continue, but when she didn't, he prompted her. "So?"

"So…"

"So do you like it?"

She thought about teasing him some more, but he looked so anxious for her answer she didn't have the heart.

"I love it," she said, grinning at him. She joined him and ran a finger along the railing. "And to think I thought the controls were complicated before."

"It's really not complicated at all, Rose," the Doctor said, and he began to explain the function, as best he knew it, of all the dials, switches and buttons. Meanwhile she wandered the room, trying to catalogue all the differences, and then decided it was impossible. There were too many. It would be far easier to try to figure out what was the same. But other than the Time Rotor and the door leading outside, she wasn't sure she could find anything.

When he realized she wasn't listening to him, he cleared his throat, trying to get her attention. But she was still engrossed in her surroundings.

"Rose," he said, startling her, and she whirled around to face him. He grinned mischievously at her. "All of time and space. Forwards, backwards, sideways… where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere?" she asked.

"Anywhere, any when. Your choice. Pick a planet, pick a time. Do you want to go to a pleasure planet? Luxurious spa? Amusement park? Concert? Just name it. It's all up to you."

Rose thought for a moment. "Beach," she said slowly. "I wanna go to a beach."

His face sank. He'd been to beaches since Bad Wolf Bay, but the thought of seeing her on a beach was almost too much.

"A beach? Are you sure?"

"What's wrong with a beach?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," he answered. He turned away from her to face the console and began to program in coordinates. "How about Grisel 5. Pink sand beaches, turquoise water, just need to get a swimsuit out of the wardrobe and we'll be there."

"No," she said. "Not that kind of beach. I'd really like to go to a specific one, somewhere we've already been. Is that alright?"

He turned and looked at her curiously. "Yes, of course, Rose. Where do you want to go?"

"Woman Wept," she said, crossing over to him. An unreadable expression came over his face, and she quickly continued. "'S just, the last time we were there we were with Jack, and I thought it might be nice if you and I went there by ourselves."

The Doctor dropped his hand from the console and took her hand, entwining their fingers. "Woman Wept is perfect," he said in a low voice. And then he smiled brightly. "Woman Wept it is! You go get some warm clothes, and I'll set the coordinates. The wardrobe is down that hall," he pointed at a door behind him, "third right, second left, past the bins, under the stairs and straight on. You can't miss it."

She grinned back and almost skipped out of the room. Meanwhile, the Doctor turned back to the console and caressed the edge before setting the coordinates. "You like Rose," he said aloud. "Please, no side trips. Let's just give her this."

~oOo~

Rose found the wardrobe, only having gotten lost once—it was the third left, not the second—and found the perfect clothes for the cold right in front. There was a jumper made of a soft wool she knew was from an alien sheep-like creature, a bright pink anorak, a matching hat and gloves, and boots which were warm but not heavy. She was certain she had worn the same coat before, as well as the boots, and she could have sworn the hat and gloves were her own from the Estate. For a second she wondered why they were here when she wasn't, and then forced the thought from her mind. If she were dead, and after hundreds of years she undoubtedly was, she didn't want to think about it.

Within minutes she was back in the console room. As was typical, the Doctor hadn't changed for the cold. To her surprise there was, however, a wicker basket sitting next to the door. He offered her his arm.

"Shall we?" he asked.

She grinned. "Fantastic."

They had arrived at night again. Or at least Rose thought it was night. The Doctor explained that the star it orbited was producing even less light than the last time they had been there and it was actually sunset.

They discovered that the TARDIS had landed on the top of a hill near the shore. As there was just enough light reflected off the moon to still be able to see, he set the basket down a distance from the TARDIS and they carefully made their way down to the beach.

He held her glove-covered hand as they walked along the shore. It was as spectacular as Rose remembered, perhaps even more so. The frozen waves towered far overhead, and the dim light of the moon shone through the ice, causing them to appear as if they were illuminated from within. She could see all sorts of aquatic life in the ice, flash-frozen and preserved for eternity. And there was just something about knowing they were the only two people on the planet. The only sounds were those of their breathing and the quiet crunch of the ice beneath their feet.

Eventually they turned back. At the top of the hill, the Doctor opened the basket, pulled out a fur rug and laid it on the ground. It looked far too large to have fit in the small space. At her raised eyebrows, he winked at her and pulled out a matching blanket.

"Time Lord technology," he said. "It's bigger on the inside."

She grinned. He gestured at the rug and she sat down.

"Oh, it's warm," she said, delighted, and pulled the blanket over her.

"They are revlins," he told her, "and they produce their own heat as long as they are fed occasionally."

Rose threw off the blanket, jumped up and stared at them. "They're alive?"

He laughed at her reaction, but not unkindly. "They're a genetically engineered life form. They are semi-sentient, designed to enjoy being sat on and petted. Go ahead, try it."

She sat back down and ran a hand across the rug, in the same direction as the fur. Underneath her fingertips she could feel a slight vibration. "Feels like it's purring," she said in amazement.

The Doctor sat down next to her and petted it himself, giving the 'rug' long, soft strokes. The sensation of the rug purring grew stronger. Rose giggled, and he grinned at her. Then he pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and sonicked some of the larger rocks nearby. They began to glow, radiating heat and producing enough light to see by. It was the Doctor equivalent of candlelight, she thought to herself.

"That's new," she said, gesturing at his sonic. He nodded.

"They do break occasionally: wear out, get snapped in half, get covered in alien goo…" As he spoke, he reached into the basket again and began pulling out a series of cartons followed by two insulated mugs and a large thermos.

"Is that what I think it is?" Rose asked hopefully.

"Aldebaran hot chocolate," he answered. "Complete with extra marshmallows, just the way you like it." He opened the thermos and poured some into each of their mugs, releasing a cloud of steam into the air. He then reached into one of the cartons, pulled out a handful of marshmallows and dropped them into her cup before he handed it to her.

She held the mug between her hands and inhaled the sweet odors of rich dark chocolate, heavy cream and marshmallow. Her mouth watered. The scent was so heavy in the air that she didn't really need to drink it in order to taste it. But drinking it was almost a religious experience. In fact, the Doctor had told her that it had once played a role in the religious ceremonies on Aldebara and only priests and royalty had been permitted to drink it.

She blew across the top of her cup to cool it and then took a sip.

"Mmmm," she said. "'S gorgeous. I haven't had this since we were on Grapa…, Grapan…"

"Grapamalia," he supplied after he drank from his own cup.

"Grapamalia." She nodded and laughed. "And we went skiing and you fell on your arse."

"I seem to remember you going down the mountain on your bum as well," he recalled with a laugh.

"Yeah, but I hadn't just bragged that I'd been in the winter Olympics in the 23rd century."

"For the luge, not for skiing," he protested. He handed her a carton and a fork.

"You were showin' off when you fell, and you know it," she said. She opened the carton and grinned when she saw the contents. It was dish consisting of prawns, pineapple and coconut in a thick, sweet sauce. She looked in a few of the other cartons. Almost all were foods that she loved from some of the places they had traveled. "Wow, you went all out! Caramel cheesecake, sweet and sour bananas, vanilla custard…" She handed him the banana carton but when she offered him the custard, to her surprise he refused.

"Ate too much of that in my last life," he said. "Used to dip fish fingers in it."

A look of disgust came over her face. "You're kidding!"

"Nope. I had rather peculiar tastes in my last life."

"I'll have to remember that when I get to know that you."

He looked away from her, appearing to concentrate on his food. Rose realized that for some reason that comment had upset him, and she guessed that maybe she hadn't known that him.

A pall fell over the conversation as they finished their picnic. The rush of adrenalin that Rose had felt in the excitement of meeting and running away with him had disappeared and that, combined with the quiet of a dead planet, allowed her memories of the past week to force themselves back into the forefront of her mind.

There were things she needed to know, things she needed to talk about with him. Not this him, of course, but somehow talking to this him seemed less intimidating than talking to the one she had left on the Estate. Maybe because they had already begun talking about things before she had realized he was the Doctor. And maybe because since he had regenerated it didn't feel so much like he had done the things that had upset her.

"Doctor, can I… can I ask you something?" she said.

Hearing her voice was such a profound interruption of the silence of the planet that he started. He looked up. She had put down her food container and was huddled under the revlin blanket. It was large enough that she had been able to wrap it around her shoulders and tuck her legs under it.

"Rose, you know I can't tell you anything about your future," he told her.

She shook her head. "'S nothin' like that. 'S just, before we left, you said you cared that Mickey had stayed behind on the parallel Earth. But you didn't act like it."

"Rose, everyone leaves me eventually," he answered quietly.

"But with Sarah Jane, you just up and left her. And you didn't protest at all when Micks stayed behind."

"With Mickey, and with Sarah Jane, it was time for them to move on with their lives," he said. "With Mickey, he needed to feel needed, and he's getting that right now taking care of his parallel grandmum and fighting the Cybermen with Pete and Jake. Rose, it always hurts when people go; I've just gotten pretty good at hiding it over the centuries."

She sat in silence for a few long moments, taking in what he had said.

"What about France?" she asked.

Inwardly, the Doctor winced at the question. But he had known it would come up, considering the turn in the conversation and where in her timeline she was.

"I know you had to save her an' all," she continued. "I get that, I really do, but you left us on the spaceship twice. You went off to party, and Micks and I almost got killed. And then when you went to save her, you did it without any way of gettin' back. Mickey and I would have died on that spaceship while you were still stuck in 18th century France."

"That first one was a mistake," he said. "But the second… You would have been okay, Rose. You and Mickey both. And I would have eventually come back to you."

"How? You didn't even know where we were."

"But I knew where you would be," he told her.

"Oh yeah? Where?" she demanded.

"On the Estate," he answered. She stared at him, uncomprehending. "You remember Emergency Program One."

"How could I forget?" she asked.

"I put together a new Emergency Program One. Emergency Program One Point Five, I called it. It would have sent you home not only if I had died, but if I was incapacitated or missing for more than a week."

"When did you do that?"

"Right away," he said. "Sometime between Christmas and New Year's, as I recall, while I was repairing her after the damage I did to her during my regeneration."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He raised an eyebrow. "And just exactly how well do you think that would have gone over?"

"Probably not all that well," she acknowledged. "But what about Reinette? Not the savin' her, but the rest of it."

"That was about a foolish old man's head being turned by a beautiful, accomplished young woman's attentions," he told her. "I had admired Reinette for a long time, and when she showed an interest in me I was very, very flattered. She saw me as a hero, and I wanted to believe that that's what I was."

"So you're saying that essentially you were a fanboy with a crush and delusions of grandeur, and you set out to prove you were a hero by ridin' in on a white horse."

He winced.

"Ouch," he said. "You wound me. But then it's nothing I haven't been called before."

She snorted. "Now that I can believe. Who said it last time? Sarah Jane?"

He looked at her evenly and didn't answer.

"What, me?" She cocked her head and looked at him. And then laughed. "I guess we've had this conversation before, haven't we? Or at least, you've had it with me before, because I certainly haven't had it with you yet."

He gave her a wry grin.

"But it was more than that, Doctor," she said, turning serious again. "She was in love with you, and you were in love with her. I saw you after she died. You were grieving."

He shook his head. "I hardly knew her. And she hardly knew me. Admiration and hero-worship aren't love. I was upset when she died, just like I'm upset whenever anyone I know dies."

"It was more than that," she disagreed. He was silent for a moment before answering.

"You're right," he said. "It was more than that. I had promised to take her on a trip, just one trip to see the stars. And I let her down. She waited her whole life for me and I let her down. But I wasn't in love with her." First moving the remains of their dinner out of the way, he moved closer to her and took her hand.

"Rose, Reinette told me what I wanted to hear, but you've always told me what I needed to hear. You've always believed in me, even when I didn't deserve it, and you've always had the courage to speak up, to stand up to me when I was wrong." He swallowed hard and looked deeply into her eyes. "And I…"

A shriek overhead made them look up. A flash of green light lit up the sky above them. It was followed by a series of streaks of various colors crossing the night sky.

"What was that?" Rose asked. "Looks like fireworks."

The Doctor grinned. "Meteor shower. You chose Woman Wept, I chose the time. The planet is closer to its system's asteroid belt than it will be in a hundred thousand years. The colors are due to the differing chemical compositions of the meteors. It's one of most spectacular light shows in the galaxy."

They sat in silence, watching the lights in the night sky, and she leaned against him, laying her head on his shoulder. In response, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. Finally, as the light show overhead dwindled, she turned to him.

"Thank you," she said. "This has been lovely."

"The day's not over yet, Rose Tyler," he said. He reached up and tucked a straying lock of hair back under her hat.

His accent grew more noticeable with the way he drew out her name. It drifted north, even further north than her first Doctor's had. He almost sounded Scottish sometimes, she realized. She was going to tease him about it, ask whether lots of planets had a Scotland, but then she didn't because of the tender way he was looking at her. His eyes drifted to her mouth. _He's going to kiss me again_ , she thought, and she felt her heart skip a beat. She unconsciously licked her lips in anticipation.

His head drew closer to hers…

And she sneezed.

"'M so sorry," she said, mortified, and he laughed. Then she laughed as well. It was just so _them_.

"Better get you into the TARDIS before you catch your death," he said, repacking his bigger-on-the-inside basket. "Because you won't want to be sick when you see where we're going next."


	4. Chapter Four

As soon as Jackie entered her building, she stowed her laundry basket near the stairwell and ran back out into the courtyard. Despite what she had said to Clara, she had heard the TARDIS. And the Doctor had said just that morning that he couldn't get the TARDIS started. Evidently he managed to.

"I'm gonna kill him if he took her away again without lettin' her say goodbye," she muttered under her breath.

Jackie noticed to her relief that Clara was no longer in the courtyard. She had seemed like just a nice, ordinary girl, until they had both heard the unmistakable wheezing and groaning of the TARDIS. Then Clara had acted very suspiciously, Jackie thought, by pretending not to have heard it. Why would she do that unless she knew exactly what the sound was? Jackie ignored the fact that her own denial was suspicious as well.

And if Clara knew what the TARDIS was, Jackie thought to herself, why would she act like she didn't know Rose?

She stalked back to the alley—the source of the sound—and it was empty.

"I'm gonna kill him," she said. "Rose wasn't ready to leave yet. I am so gonna kill him."

Meanwhile, in the stairwell of a building on the other side of the courtyard, the tenth Doctor was still questioning Clara. He stood between her and the doorway, blocking her escape.

"What does this all have to do with Rose?" he demanded. "And where is Rose, anyway?"

"I don't know," she told him anxiously, glancing around his shoulder at the door.

"How could you not know?" he asked. "She should be here. Twice, in fact. The version I travel with now, and the one I travel with in the future."

She pursed her lips together in an effort not to say anything, but she couldn't prevent herself from making the tiniest shake of her head.

"But I must still be traveling with her," he protested. "She must be here. I promised she could stay with me. And you know her."

Clara looked away. The Doctor stared at her, searching for signs of the truth in her body language.

"She doesn't travel with me anymore, does she?" he asked quietly. "How far in my future are you from?"

She met his eyes. "Doctor, you know I can't tell you that."

"You were calling me, but when you saw me you ran away," he said after a moment's thought. "Why would you run away?" His eyes suddenly widened in realization. "You recognized me, but somehow you knew instantly I wasn't from your timestream. Which means the me you travel with is a future regeneration, isn't he?" He didn't bother to wait for her response. He knew she wouldn't tell him and he knew the answer anyway. "If Rose isn't with me anymore, why would I have come here?" He didn't expect an answer so he was surprised when she gave him one.

"You set it on random," she said. "It was an accident."

"This was no accident," he disagreed. "An accident would be landing in Antarctica or in the middle of the Black Plague or something." He shook his head. "There was a reason to this. If I only knew what it was."

~oOo~

The twelfth Doctor and Rose entered the TARDIS, the Doctor carrying the wicker basket that held the remains of their picnic.

"Since you picked Woman Wept, I'm picking where we go next," he told her, setting it on the floor near the console.

"Okay, so where are we going?" she asked, pulling off her hat and gloves and shoving them in the pocket of her anorak. She took off the coat and hung it up on the coat rack standing next to the door.

"Ah, now that would be telling," he said with a wink.

She snorted. "Yeah, but if you don't tell me, how will I know what to wear? Unless..." she said slowly, "I don't need to change for where we're going?" Her brow furrowed as she tried to analyze what he was thinking from his expression, but his face was unreadable.

"If you go back to the wardrobe," he said mildly. "I'm sure the TARDIS will point out something appropriate."

She nodded and headed out the door but not before trying to read his expression again. He definitely had a better poker-face than either of her Doctors, she thought. She had always been able to tell what they were thinking.

Rose didn't see the Doctor watching her as she left the room. Once he was sure she was gone, he looked up at the ceiling.

"Why did you do this?" he asked quietly. "Why bring me to the Estate to see her again? After our day together is over, how am I ever going to let her go?" He didn't expect a response, and he didn't get one.

~oOo~

Rose slowly walked down the corridor, trailing a finger along the wall and marveling at how different the TARDIS was. The roundels were everywhere, illuminating the hallway with a soft light that was slightly greenish-blue. In her TARDIS, the roundels were fewer and farther between and the light they produced was more of a yellowish-orange.

As she headed down the first right on her way to the wardrobe, the lights suddenly went out in front of her. She turned and saw that the lights continued in the direction she had initially been headed. She smiled wryly and caressed the wall.

"You want me to go that way, yeah?" she asked aloud.

There was no response from the TARDIS, or at least nothing Rose could identify as a response. Still, she continued in the direction the TARDIS seemed to be directing her and was rewarded when the overhead lights brightened.

She continued in that manner, following the direction of the lights, until she reached a door on her left. Suddenly the lights in the corridor turned off, plunging the hall into darkness except for a series of lights surrounding the door that began to slowly flash.

For a moment, Rose wondered if the TARDIS had led her to her own room. But that would be silly, she thought to herself. Why would the TARDIS have kept her old room just sitting around somewhere? Besides, even if it were her own room, how would she even be able to tell? Surely her things would be gone by now.

It occurred to her that perhaps the TARDIS had moved the wardrobe. She did that sort of thing fairly frequently, out of boredom Rose thought. Or at least her TARDIS had.

The string of lights began blinking more rapidly.

"In here?" Rose asked.

The lights stopped flickering. Instead they began to glow in a steady stream and then brightened, as if the TARDIS was agreeing with her. Rose opened the door. But instead of the wardrobe she expected, what she found was a bedroom. But not her bedroom.

The circular Gallifreyan writing that was in the console room was here as well, outlining not only the doors to the hall and en suite but also where the walls met the ceiling. And the roundels that were in the console room and halls also extended into the room, but unlike in the halls, glowed with a soft white light.

Her first impression of the large room was that it belonged to a man. The furnishings were heavy and dark: the headboard, nightstands, bookcase and table were all made from some sort of dark wood; a dark maroon and blue duvet with matching pillows were on the bed; a dark brown overstuffed chair had been placed near the bookcase.

Her second impression was that it was unoccupied; the bed was neatly made and there were no stray cups or books on either nightstand. Nothing was on the small table next to the chair. No personal items were lying around save something that looked like a maroon bowtie. That small strip of cloth looked like it had been dropped on the floor and kicked into the corner.

Rose would have thought that she was in the wrong room, despite the TARDIS leading her here, except a dress lay on the bed and matching sandals were on the floor. The TARDIS rarely picked out her clothes for her; she made suggestions by highlighting things in the wardrobe, but typically Rose chose something on her own.

She crossed over to the bed and picked up the dress. As she held it up to herself, she had to admit the dress was gorgeous and looked to be exactly her size. She briefly wondered where the Doctor was taking her next as she set it back down.

"Well, if I'm gonna wear that, I really need a shower," she said aloud. At her words, the light in the en suite turned on. She smiled. "Thanks."

In the bathroom, she noticed two sets of toiletries. One clearly belonged to a man: a man's razor, shaving cream, aftershave. Next to them sat a set of makeup identical to the ones she had in her own en suite in her TARDIS. No, they were not identical. They were the same ones. Not only were they open and had already been used, but there was a small drop of nail polish on the clear plastic lid of the eye shadow container. She had accidentally dripped it there herself only a few days earlier.

In the shower was a set of soap, shampoo and conditioner in the brand and scent she used, along with a woman's razor. She chuckled. She had showered that morning, but she had neglected to shave.

"Tryin' to tell me somethin'?"

~oOo~

"Why does there have to be a reason?" Clara asked.

"Haven't you learned anything while traveling with me?" the Doctor asked incredulously. "There are no coincidences. Or at least not like this. Setting the TARDIS on random isn't really random. It's more like letting the TARDIS choose where we go. But why would the TARDIS choose here of all places? She knows what the risks are in crossing our own timestreams. We could risk a paradox, or worse. If it's not handled correctly, meeting myself here could rip a hole in the universe."

The Doctor shook his head as he looked at Clara. "I shouldn't be talking to you. I could be risking a paradox just by meeting you. And I can already tell that my timeline has been altered. I just don't know how yet." He closed his eyes and grimaced as he rubbed his forehead in frustration.

"I'm not particularly happy about all of this either," she told him. "But maybe if we work together we can restore the timeline."

"How?"

"I don't know how!" she exploded. "You're the genius. You're supposed to tell me."

He stared at her, considering her words.

"Alright," he said finally. "The TARDIS may have crossed her own timestream and brought you both here, but I should be able to figure out what future me did."

"If you do, can't you go back in the TARDIS, your TARDIS, and stop him, yourself, somehow?" she asked.

The Doctor shook his head. "Hasn't future me taught you anything about time travel?" he asked. "We're already part of events here. Even if I could—which I can't because the TARDIS is unable to dematerialize—I wouldn't because the consequences might be worse than just letting events play out as is." He yanked on one ear thoughtfully. "Well, assuming I was here, which we both know I was, why would I leave without you? Because I did leave. Will leave? Am going to leave?" He shook his head vigorously. "Future me left in the future TARDIS and for some reason left you here. Out of your own place and time. Or are you? Is this where and when you're from?"

"Yes," she said, nodding, and then shook her head. "No. Maybe? That question is a little more complicated than you realize."

"Well, whatever the reason, we've got to find Rose."

"I met a woman earlier. She invited me to have a cuppa with her," she told him. "She said her daughter's name was Rose. Was that your Rose's mother?"

"Fortyish with bottle-blonde hair, too much makeup and a propensity for wearing track suits?" When she nodded he continued. "You've got to watch out for her. She has a heck of a slap. Or maybe that's just with me." He took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "You go and try to find Rose. She might be back at her mother's flat. And I'll go back and look in my TARDIS. She might have gone back there. There's a park right down from the alley where we met. After you're done at Jackie's, meet me there. With Rose if you find her."

The Doctor moved to the side, allowing Clara to pass, and she slipped through the doorway. But once outside, she hesitated.

"Number 48, she said. I can do this. I can find Rose and bring her back to the Doctor without letting her know who I am." She looked up to the fourth floor of Jackie's building. "I can do this. I can meet her without causing a paradox. I think. I hope." She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and then strode purposefully across the courtyard.

The Doctor followed Clara out of the building and quickly made his way to the alley. And then ducked out again. Jackie was there, muttering something about slapping him the next time she saw him. He made a face. He had really wanted to avoid Jackie. But there was no way around it. Unless he wanted to hide in the stairwell for an undetermined period of time, he was going to have to face her. Plastering a false smile on his face, he casually walked into the alley.

When she saw him, her jaw dropped. "You're still here!"

"Yes, of course I'm still here. Where else would I be?" he asked.

"But I thought… I heard the TARDIS leave."

"You couldn't have," he told her. "She's on the far side of the park. Besides, I told you this morning it would be a few extra days before she's well enough to take off. Perhaps it's time to get your hearing checked. You know they say that's one of the first things to go, and, well…"

She crossed her arms and scowled at him. "I heard the TARDIS leave," she said.

"Now how could she have done that, when I'm standing right here? You aren't suggesting that she just took off by herself, now are you?"

She opened her mouth to argue with him some more but then stopped herself. "Well, if you're still here, that means Rose is, too. I'm goin' back up to the flat." She walked past him and headed out of the alley.

Once she was gone, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and began to scan the area. Now that he knew a future TARDIS was involved, he knew what to look for. He frowned when he saw the readings. The residual time trace he picked up indicated the TARDIS that had been in the alley was from several hundred years in his personal future.

The sensation of his skin crawling returned, along with the feeling that his timeline was being altered again.

"What was I thinking, risking a paradox this way?" he asked himself, his voice slightly echoing in the narrow alley. "What did I do?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song _Fly Me to the Moon_ , originally called _In Other Words_ , was written by Bart Howard in 1954.

**Chapter Five**

After programming in the coordinates for their next destination, the Doctor began the long, painful process of waiting for Rose. How could he have forgotten how long it took her to get ready?

He spent a surprising amount of time waiting for companions, he thought as he wandered around the console room. Far too long in his opinion. And of course, being a Time Lord and therefore an expert on all issues regarding time, his was the opinion that counted. Now if only he could convince his companions of that.

To give himself something to do, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and began polishing the console. It didn't really need it, the TARDIS was perfectly capable of keeping herself dust-free, but he found the entire process therapeutic. He had known as soon as he had regenerated that the potential for darkness was stronger in this incarnation than in most of his previous ones. The centuries since the Time War, what had happened to him and what he had done, weighed heavily on him, and the rhythmic motion of cloth against console was his form of meditation and allowed him moments to center himself.

He had finished the console and had just begun the railings when he heard Rose at the doorway. He looked up at her. And froze.

She was wearing a cocktail dress. But this was not just any dress. It was a replica of one of the most famous dresses of the twentieth century, although Rose's was in black rather than ivory. And on Rose it was a work of art.

The bodice was made of two pieces of gathered fabric that were fastened halter-like behind her neck at the top, which left her back and shoulders bare. It was attached to a fitted band beneath her breasts, as was the full skirt beneath. The dress both emphasized her slimness and accentuated her natural curves.

The Doctor gaped at her as he watched her walk into the room, the shifting of the soft material of the skirt making it seem to float around her legs as she moved. Biting her lower lip, Rose smiled shyly at his reaction, but it quickly faded as his expression turned to puzzlement. She glanced down at herself.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Am I dressed wrong for where we're goin' or somethin'?"

"No," he said quickly. He put a bright smile on his face. "No, of course not. That's perfect."

He crossed back to the console and checked the coordinates. He recognized them instantly, but they were not what he had programmed in. He had thought that Rose might want to have a bit of fun at an amusement park he had once taken Jamie and Zoe to. He didn't think that amusement parks were his sort of thing this time 'round, but he knew Rose would enjoy it, and he was always happy when she was happy.

But the coordinates programmed in the console were definitely not for an amusement park.

Wondering what the TARDIS was up to, and not certain he wanted to know the answer, he flipped switches and pulled down levers and the TARDIS began to materialize.

~oOo~

Having first retrieved her laundry basket from where she had left it in the stairwell, Jackie arrived back at the flat only to find Clara knocking on her door.

"What are you doin' here?" she asked sharply.

"You invited me," Clara reminded her.

"I thought you were lookin' for your friend," Jackie said. "Did you find him?"

Clara shook her head. "He left, and while I'm waiting for him, I thought I could take you up on your offer."

"Your friend, he doesn't happen to be tall and skinny with dark brown hair and a pinstriped suit, does he?"

"No," she answered. "He's tall and fairly skinny, but his hair is going gray and he definitely doesn't wear a pinstriped suit."

Jackie looked at her suspiciously. "Listen, I don't know what you're playin' at, but we both know you heard the TARDIS. If you know what the TARDIS is, then you know the Doctor, and if you know the Doctor, that means you know my daughter."

Clara considered lying to her, but as the Doctor had noted, she was bad at it. And although he hadn't said so, she knew she was exceptionally bad at it. Brow furrowed, she looked at Jackie appraisingly, wondering how much she could tell her without damaging the timeline. Finally she took a deep breath and let it out forcefully.

"Okay, it's a bit complicated but I know what the TARDIS is, and I know the Doctor, but he doesn't really know me, not yet at any rate, and Rose doesn't know me at all. But I need to find her, without her knowing that I know about the Doctor or the TARDIS."

Jackie stared blankly at the younger woman. She didn't understand how Clara could know the Doctor without him knowing her, but then everything that had to do with the Doctor was odd bordering on, and sometimes crossing over to, bizarre. After a moment's consideration, Jackie sighed and jerked her head at the door. "Well, come on in, then. We'll see if she's here, and if she isn't, you can wait for her."

~oOo~

While Jackie was speaking to Clara, the tenth Doctor quickly walked back to his TARDIS. He sensed his timeline was beginning to stabilize, as if it had found a new path and was settling into it, but he still felt very uneasy. The business of his future self crossing his own timeline and then leaving his companion on the Estate was incomprehensible to him.

And he couldn't find Rose. As he had passed through the park, he had looked again for her but she wasn't there.

He unlocked the TARDIS door and entered the console room. Just as it had been earlier, it was silent and dark. And empty. And he knew Rose wasn't off in another room because all the other places in the TARDIS that she would most likely be, like her bedroom or the library or the kitchen, were all inaccessible due to the damage she had sustained in her voyage through the Void. Which meant she wasn't here.

He sank down on the captain's chair and stared unseeing in front of him while he wondered where on Earth Rose could be. For a fleeting moment, it occurred to him that she could be with his older self.

"No, I wouldn't take her out of her timestream like that," he said aloud. "Would I? No. I know better than that. Besides, she wouldn't go anyway. Unless… unless she just got into the wrong TARDIS for some reason." He grimaced. "Could happen, I suppose. I might not even know about it."

His eyes fell upon the telephone built into the console. And slowly smiled. He jumped up, crossed to the console and picked up the receiver.

"I could ring her on her mobile," he said, punching in the number into the keypad. "Why didn't I think of that before? I'll just call her and find out where she is. Easy peasy lemon squeezy." He made a face and shook his head. "Nope. Don't like that one."

He put the receiver up to his ear and listened to the telephone ring while he waited for her to answer.

~oOo~

As Rose's mobile began to ring in the pocket of her jeans, the TARDIS materialized with its usual loud thud.

The Doctor offered Rose his arm. She took it with a happy grin which he returned.

"Shall we, Dame Rose of the Powell Estate?"

Her grin widened, her tongue peeking out to touch her teeth. "Absolutely, Sir Doctor of TARDIS."

He led her out the door to a blast of hot, humid air.

"Whoa," she said.

"A bit different from Woman Wept?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.

"Just a bit, yeah."

The TARDIS had landed next to a trail that wound through what looked like an overgrown garden. There were masses of colorful flowers everywhere, producing a heady scent that filled the air, and the tall trees that shaded the path were covered with long curtains of moss which hung from their branches.

"We're in the city of New New Orleans," the Doctor said as they carefully made their way down the path. "Settled by humans in the 72nd century. It's known galaxy-wide for its music, its food and its laidback culture."

"So if this city is named New New Orleans, does that make this planet New Louisiana?" she asked, drawing on a barely remembered geography class she had taken.

"Good guess, but no," he replied. "In fact, this is the planet Kumquat. Never could figure out why; they don't actually have kumquats here. There's got to be a story there somewhere, but I've never heard it."

They reached the edge of the garden and let themselves through a wrought iron gate to find themselves on the cobblestone pavement of a narrow street. Colorful brick buildings all sporting ornate balconies lined both sides of the road, and in the distance Rose could hear music.

The Doctor looked up and down the street a moment before nodding.

"Good," he said. "We're not far." He took her hand, and they walked down the street.

"Far from what?" she asked.

"From a little club I know," he replied.

She stopped and stared at him in shock.

"You. Are taking me. To a club."

He chuckled. "Not that kind of club, Rose. Not an overcrowded room filled with flashing lights and eardrum-splitting noise that smells of spilled beer and sweat. No, this is a real club, where we can listen to real music."

"Alright," she said slowly, raising an eyebrow at the smirk on his face. "Let's go see what you call a real club."

~oOo~

The tenth Doctor paced back and forth in the console room of his TARDIS, running one hand through his hair in frustration. He had tried to ring Rose four times on her mobile, but she hadn't answered. She always answered her mobile, or at least she always answered when he rang. There were plenty of times when she didn't answer when Jackie rang.

Now what, he thought. There was another thing he could do, but he had been trying to avoid it. But he couldn't put it off any longer, no matter how unpleasant it was.

He picked up the phone again and rang Jackie.

~oOo~

Clara carried a mug of tea to the tiny living room in Jackie's flat. To her disappointment, or possibly relief, Rose wasn't there. She knew they'd all be at less risk of a paradox if Rose didn't meet her. She tried to convince herself that the Doctor had already found her. That would be good, she told herself.

Depending on which Doctor it was, of course.

As soon as they had walked in the door, even before she had made the tea, Jackie had immediately turned on the television, and it was now blaring in the background when they sat down.

"So let me get this straight," Jackie said. "You know my daughter, but she doesn't know you?"

Before Clara could answer, the telephone started ringing.

"Just a minute," Jackie said. "I need to get this." She picked up her mobile off the coffee table and answered it. "Oh, hello, Bev. How's the headache? Still? Y'know, hangovers aren't supposed to last five days. Mine only lasted two. Yes, I know it was your birthday, not mine, but still. That's what you get for drinking those tropical drinks with those tequila shot chasers. No, I didn't get his number. Or his name. He went home with you, after all. Didn't you get it?"

The conversation didn't seem to be anywhere near ending, so Clara picked up the television remote and started flipping through the channels.

~oOo~

The Parrot, the nightclub that the Doctor had brought her to, was located in the basement of a long, squat building only two blocks away from where the TARDIS was. Not unlike many of the clubs she had gone to at home, there was a long queue at the door, but unlike in London, the majority of people waiting were not human. There were blue ones with white hair and antennae that reminded Rose of one of the aliens from Star Trek, short ones with spikes that resembled red cacti, people with purple skin and trunk-like noses, and one that resembled a giant chartreuse slug.

The Doctor ignored the queue—and the protests of the people in it—and walked straight to the person manning the door. He flashed his psychic paper, and as was typical when he used it, they were immediately escorted in and seated at one of the best tables in the house.

The club was not very large, consisting of a small stage at the front of the room, a long bar in the back, and perhaps two dozen tables in between. A small dance floor had been carved out in front of the stage, but Rose didn't expect that they'd make use of it.

Although the stage was empty, soft music played in the background, undoubtedly piped in from somewhere, although Rose couldn't see speakers for it. Or any sound system at all, as the stage held no microphone either.

While they were being seated, the Doctor had ordered drinks for them both, and after they had been delivered, he began to tell her about the club they were in.

"It's actually the third best place in the universe to listen to old Earth jazz, although they don't limit themselves to that here. In addition to jazz, they play a number of other types of music from Earth's early and mid-twentieth century like blues and swing, as well as similar types of music from other parts of the galaxy."

"If this is the third best place to hear jazz, where's the other two?"

"Well, the best place was a little club called the Blue Diamond. It was even smaller than this one and it was located on Bourbon Street in the original New Orleans. The second was a little bigger than here, and it was in Chicago in the mid-twentieth century."

"So why didn't we go to one of those?" she asked.

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Why go to Earth when we could go anywhere in the universe?" he asked, looking away from her.

"And?"

"And what?"

"I can tell there's an 'and' in there somewhere," she said.

"Well, to be honest," he admitted after a moment, "I was sort of a big fan of jazz music in my seventh life."

When he didn't continue, she laughed. "And you don't want to risk running into yourself, do you?"

He looked a bit sheepish. "I always find it a bit… embarrassing. Unfortunate clothing choices, unpleasant personality quirks…"

She raised her eyebrows. "What kind of 'unfortunate clothing choices'?"

He grimaced. "I had an appalling tendency to wear sleeveless jumpers patterned with little question marks in that life."

Rose couldn't stifle a snort. "Question marks?"

"I was rather fond of them for quite a while. Started late in my fourth life, thankfully ended with my seventh." He sounded so relieved about it that she had to laugh.

Placing her elbows on the table, Rose stared at the Doctor thoughtfully. Once she had found out about regeneration, she had asked him about previous lives, but he had managed to sidestep most of her questions by changing the subject. This Doctor was so different than the Doctors she knew, the gruff one in leather and the manic one in pinstripes, and evidently each one of his lives was different than the others.

When he realized she was openly staring at him, the Doctor looked at her, puzzled.

"What?" he asked, sounding like his younger, pinstriped self.

"I can't get over how different you are," she said.

He raised one eyebrow.

"New new Doctor?" he asked her with a wry grin.

"New new new Doctor," she corrected.

"That's regeneration for you. Never know what you're gonna get. Older, younger, skinny, fat… Could be anything."

"'S more than that, though. 'S like you're a whole different person. For example, I never have heard you talk about your past selves as much as I have today."

"As a general rule, I don't tend to revisit previous lives," he allowed. "Time Lords normally didn't. A new incarnation is an opportunity to start fresh: different tastes in clothes and in food, different word choices, different accents..."

"Different companions…" she added.

He acknowledged that with a small nod. "But as different as I may seem, deep down I'm the same man, Rose."

"If you don't 'revisit previous lives', why did you come back for me?" she asked after a moment.

"I explained that. The TARDIS—"

She shook her head. "No, 's not what I meant. 'S one thing to see me, but you asked me to come with. Why?"

The Doctor looked away, seemingly focusing on the empty stage, and was silent for so long that she began to think he wouldn't answer. Finally he took a deep breath and turned back to her, meeting her eyes.

"Because you're the exception, Rose," he said in a low voice. "As long as I've known you, you've always been the exception."

Like it had when she had first met this him, with his words her world seemed to tilt sideways. She certainly hadn't felt like the exception recently. Instead, after meeting Sarah Jane and then the business with Reinette, she felt like just one in a long line, and not a particularly important one at that. But it was completely unlike him to be so open about his feelings, and she desperately wanted to believe him.

Unable to handle the intensity of the moment, she picked up her glass and stared at the fluorescent blue liquid in it. The Doctor had told her that it was the local version of whiskey when he had ordered it, but it was far smoother than any whiskey she had ever had. After a moment, she downed the rest of her drink, feeling its mild, not unpleasant burn at the back of her throat as she swallowed, and tried to convince herself that the lightheadedness she felt was due to the alcohol and not because of how he was looking at her.

The Doctor picked up his own glass and finished it. As he gestured to the waiter to bring two more, the band began to take the stage and the overhead lights began to dim.

A loud flapping noise overhead made the entire audience, save the Doctor, gasp and duck in surprise.

"Wha'…" Rose began, looking up.

The Doctor's mouth twitched in amusement.

She opened her mouth, and abruptly shut it.

"What is it?" he asked.

"'S just," she said, staring at the stage, "it's a bird."

The creature who had landed on the stage looked a bit like an ostrich in size and shape, but the resemblance stopped there. As it moved, the iridescent plumage of its body shifted from red to green and back as the feathers caught the light, while the long yellow feathers on its head somewhat resembled hair.

"Don't know why you're surprised," the Doctor said. "Birds are some of the best singers in the universe."

After considering for a moment, Rose shrugged in agreement. "Can't argue with that."

On the stage, the bird began to sing, and she was surprised not only that she could understand—the TARDIS had never translated birdsong before—but also by the dulcet tone of his voice. The first few songs were unfamiliar to her, unlike anything she had ever heard before, but she found them beautiful.

Rose was jealous as a number of couples made their way to the small dance floor. She loved to dance, but she rarely had the opportunity to. Mickey had almost never taken her clubbing, preferring to take her to the local for a pint so he could watch the match, and she usually had ended up going to clubs with Shareen and Keisha. And the only times she had danced since traveling with the Doctor was once on top of a spaceship parked in front of Big Ben with Jack, and then around the console of the TARDIS with the Doctor himself that same evening.

Eventually the singer began to sing songs she was somewhat familiar with. Halfway through her second drink, she wasn't in any way drunk, but she was feeling relaxed in a way she hadn't felt in weeks. Leaning back in her chair, she glanced over at the Doctor and gave him a small smile which he returned. He leaned towards her.

"So what do you think?" he asked, the first thing he had said since the bird had begun singing.

"'S nice," she answered. "I'm amazed at how human he sounds."

"His species is extremely good at mimicry," he told her. "Their own language is not pronounceable by humanoids, not even by me, and over the millennia that they have had contact with humans they have developed the ability to use human languages."

The bird-like creature began the next song, and Rose grinned as she recognized it.

_Fly me to the moon_  
Let me play among the stars  
Let me see what spring is like  
On a-Jupiter and Mars  
In other words, hold my hand  
In other words, baby, kiss me 

She finished her drink, stood up and moved to stand in front of him. She held out her hand.

"Come on," she said with a jerk of her head towards the dance floor. "They're playin' our song."

"Oh, Rose," he said, shaking his head. "I don't dance."

"Yes, you do," she argued. She pulled him to his feet and led him out to the dance floor.

"I have to warn you, it's been a while," he told her, pulling her into his arms. "And I don't know if I remember how to do this anymore."

"You're doin' fine," she told him.

"Thank goodness." He sounded relieved. "Last time 'round, my dancing left a little to be desired. In fact, I was informed that when I danced I looked like a drunken giraffe."

She chuckled. "Really?"

"Yes, and the worst part of it is that in retrospect I realize they were being kind."

She burst out laughing. "Oh, no!" she said.

"Oh, yes."

They fell silent as the next song began. After a few moments, his hand drifted upwards. Skin met skin as he lightly began to trace patterns on her bare back with his fingertips. With a small sigh of pleasure, she rested her head on his shoulder and was rewarded by him tightening his grip on her.

Too soon the set ended. The Doctor took her hand and reluctantly Rose let him lead her back to their table.

"I wish I had known him," she said once they were seated again.

"Who?" he asked.

"You," she told him. "Last you."

"I wish you had, too," he said quietly, for the first time admitting that she hadn't known that incarnation. He reached over the table to take her hand again. "I missed you. Very, very much."

Tears sprung to her eyes at the repressed emotion she could hear in his voice. She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

"I'm here now."


	6. Chapter Six

Three hours after the twelfth Doctor and Clara had arrived on the Powell Estate, and two and a half hours after she had gone to Jackie's flat for a cup of tea, Clara was still there, watching mind-numbing television. Rose hadn't returned to the flat yet, and Jackie didn't seem worried about it in the slightest. In fact, she had spent most of the past two and a half hours on the telephone.

Bored with telly, she was trying not to listen to Jackie's latest phone call. She wasn't above a little eavesdropping by any stretch of the imagination, but Jackie's telephone calls were repetitive and more than a little boring. So far she had spoken to Bev, Cousin Mo, Roger, Howard and now Bev again.

Clara got up off the sofa to make herself another cup of tea, her third, as Jackie continued her latest conversation.

"Dropped in unannounced, no warnin', nothin' in the house but bananas and biscuits, which he promptly ate I might add. Of course I was glad Rose was home. She was so upset about Mickey, poor dear. Oh, didn't I tell you? He's gone. Moved out. Not comin' back so far as I know. Anyway, they get here and himself is eatin' me outa house'n home, but will he take a minute from his busy schedule to fix my washer? No. Anyway, Bev, I says to him…"

~oOo~

The tenth Doctor searched in vain for Rose for more than two hours, ringing Shareen and Keisha and stopping by the chippy, the pizza place, the community center and the library. He even went to Mickey's flat on the off chance she had gone there to pack up his things, but as soon as he had let himself in, with the help of the sonic screwdriver, he knew no one had been there since Mickey had joined them on the TARDIS. The younger man's flat was a disaster, even more so than the last time he had entered it. There were dirty clothes, dishes and gaming magazines lying on the floor and every horizontal surface, the bed hadn't been made—and from the smell the sheets hadn't been changed in months—and the remaining food in the refrigerator looked as though Mickey had been conducting scientific experiments on mold in his off hours.

After quickly deciding that it wasn't his responsibility to clean up the mess, which looked as if it required a hazmat team and a shovel more than anything, the Doctor had returned to the park. There he waited in vain for Clara to return. He briefly considered returning to Jackie's flat. If Rose was there she was perfectly safe, but if she wasn't there, he didn't want to have to admit to Jackie that he didn't know where her daughter was. He told himself that it was because he didn't want to worry Jackie, but deep down he knew that it was because he wasn't looking forward to the inevitable slap he'd get from her. He wanted to put that off as long as possible.

And the truth was he was becoming more and more worried that Rose was with his older self.

Eventually he gave up waiting for Clara. He returned to the TARDIS where he once again tried to ring Rose. For some unknown reason she still wasn't answering. It occurred to him that perhaps she wasn't picking up because she was still upset with him over the events of the past few weeks. He had known she was not happy with him after the business with Reinette, and then again after the business with Mickey, but they really hadn't talked about it. On the other hand that was the usual way that they handled things and he, for one, was perfectly happy with that arrangement.

For the lack of anything better to do, he climbed under the console and returned to making repairs. The sooner he could get the TARDIS fixed, the sooner he'd be able to scan for Rose, and even search off-planet if necessary.

~oOo~

After another set at the club, the twelfth Doctor took Rose out to dinner, and she had stared at him in disbelief when he told her how the restaurant was advertised.

"They call themselves a genuine copy of an old New Orleans restaurant?" she had asked, laughing.

"And they're very proud of it," he said, grinning.

Rose had never been to New Orleans—and she made a note to herself to ask the Doctor to take her—but this was exactly what she would have imagined: tiny tables squeezed into a crowded room, plaster walls painted a delicate yellow, ceiling fans with large oval blades slowly spinning overhead.

And the food…

"This is delicious," she said, tucking in as soon as the waiter had brought it to the table. "What is it again?"

"Jambalaya," he replied, frowning. He still hadn't tasted it yet; instead he poked and prodded it with his fork.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"New taste buds. Don't know if I'll like it or not."

"You ordered it," she said, laughing. "Might as well try it." She speared a large prawn with her fork and held it up. He obediently opened his mouth and she shoved it in. A look of relief crossed his face as he began to chew. "See, 's good, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," he said, and began to eat with relish.

"Still can't get over it," she said, shaking her head. "My you will eat anything in sight, and taste things that aren't even edible. 'Cept pears, of course."

A shadow crossed his face, and she wondered what she had said wrong this time.

"Different looks, different taste buds, different accent, but I'm still me," he said quietly.

Her smile faded when she met his eyes. They weren't quite blue as she had thought in the park, but they weren't not blue either. Stormy, she'd call them, changeable even. Blue and grey and green, changing with the surroundings and his mood. But despite the color, she saw him. The same him with the piercing blue eyes, and the same him with the chocolate brown ones. He was still him.

But it was more than that, she realized. Somehow, at some point between the fluorescent Kumquat whiskey and the genuine imitation jambalaya, _somehow_ he had become hers.

And somehow, she had become his as well.

"Yes, I know you are," she told him, her voice carrying the pure truth of that statement.

She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. And as he squeezed it back, they smiled.

~oOo~

After getting caught up on the latest game shows, reality shows and soap operas that an afternoon in 2007 had to offer, some of which she was convinced she had seen before, Clara decided to leave. Jackie was still on the telephone—Clara hadn't heard the name of the caller this time—and it didn't seem likely that Rose was going to return to the flat any time soon.

She made a quick trip to the loo, the inevitable consequence of drinking almost a gallon of tea over the past few hours, and waved to Jackie as she left. Jackie waved back absently without missing a beat of her conversation.

Once in the courtyard, Clara stopped, debating which direction to go. A loud stomach growl decided the matter. She had seen a chippie earlier; she'd go get something to eat before meeting the Doctor in the park.

Whichever Doctor showed up.

~oOo~

As the suns began to set, they left the restaurant. Humans and aliens, dressed in finery—or in the case of some of the aliens, not dressed at all—passed them on the cobblestone street as they walked, all headed to specific destinations, but unlike them, the Doctor and Rose wandered aimlessly through the streets, her arm looped through his, her head occasionally coming to rest on his shoulder. The cooling air was filled with the sounds of music and the smells of cooking food coming from the open doors of the restaurants and nightclubs they passed. More than once they stopped, standing hand in hand in a doorway somewhere listening to a particularly good singer or a lively band, but then they'd move on without entering, as if by staying in motion they could prevent the evening from coming to a quick end.

As the streetlights came on and night began to fall in earnest, they reluctantly headed back. After a quick use of the sonic on the iron gate, they reentered the garden and followed the path to the TARDIS, each step slower than the last. Finally Rose came to a stop, tilting her head up and pressing her lips to his.

It was just a quick kiss, of thanks no doubt, but it was his. It was truly his, and only his. It wasn't Cassandra using her body to snog him, it wasn't a kiss of good luck placed on a space helmet, it wasn't a kiss intended for the cheek of someone named Harry, it was her kissing him. And even if that were the only kiss she ever gave him, he'd take it and take it gladly.

After a moment, she smiled at him, and with a tug on his hand, she slowly led the way back to the TARDIS.

~oOo~

After a few minor repairs and a system restore of the temporal vortex transducer, the tenth Doctor wondered if connecting the power outlet socket directly to the transducer cells would allow the TARDIS to more readily access the energy within them. He even considered transferring some of his own energy directly to her as he had while in Pete's World, but then decided such a drastic step could be put off until later, as a last resort. Being stuck on Earth was nothing like being stuck in a parallel universe, and he knew the TARDIS would eventually heal herself in time. He just was impatient to have the process done now.

Reconnecting a few loose wires that had come undone during his repairs, the overhead lights suddenly came on. The Time Rotor was still dark, but he'd take any progress he could get.

As he climbed out from under the console, ready to give Rose a celebratory hug, he suddenly remembered she wasn't there. How had he been so focused on what he had been doing to forget that?

He tried to ring her mobile again, but again she didn't answer.

Where could she be, he asked himself, although by now he was certain he knew the answer. Why would he become so reckless in the future that he would take her out of her timeline? Why would he sweep in and figuratively—if not literally—carry her off, not just from her planet and her family and her life on the Powell Estate as he had when they had first met, but from himself as well?

And then he felt the slight skin crawl and disorientation of his timeline changing again.

He needed to find Clara and question her again, he thought as he left the TARDIS again. Despite the danger to himself, he needed to find out what kind of man he had become that he would risk everything like this. Only then would he have a chance of righting the timeline.

And, he worried, that only by risking everything would he get Rose back.

~oOo~

"So where _are_ we going next?" Rose asked, leaning against the railing circling the console.

The Doctor pulled down a lever on the console and smirked at her. "You'll see. And we're already here."

She headed towards the door, and he stopped her.

"Just wait," he said. "You can't actually go out there."

She looked at him curiously. "If we can't go out there, then why are we here?"

"You'll see," he told her. "Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Go ahead, close them," he urged.

Obediently she closed her eyes and covered them with her hands for good measure. The Doctor grabbed hold of her shoulders and gently led her across the room towards the door.

"Okay, just stand here," he instructed. "Alright, open your eyes."

Rose dropped her hands from her face and gasped. The doors stood wide open, revealing the fact that they were floating in outer space and in front of them…

"I don't believe it," she said in wonder. "It looks like a giant rose."

"It's the Rose Nebula," he said quietly. "Just a patch of glowing gas and dust, and yet it is one of the most beautiful things in the universe." He was silent for a moment. "I always wanted to show it to you, but somehow I never got around to it."

"Well, you have now," she said with a small smile for him. Standing on her tiptoes, she leaned forward and gently kissed him as she had in the garden. "'S beautiful. Thank you."

The Doctor pulled her into his embrace. Tilting her chin up, he lowered his head to hers and captured her lips with his, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. Without words she urged him to deepen the kiss; her tongue traced the edge of his lips, seeking entrance. With a quiet groan, he responded, opening his mouth and caressing her tongue with his. It was his first real taste of her, having denied himself this while they were together. This was something he had never thought he'd have, not after Canary Wharf, and something he had longed for on the beach in the parallel Norway when he had given her up.

He deepened the kiss, his tongue entering her mouth and allowing hers to enter his. Dimly he tasted the sharp flavor of the whiskey they had had earlier, but underneath was the pure flavor of Rose. It was intoxicating in a way the whiskey had not been; it made him lightheaded as blood moved from his brain lower.

The kiss quickly became fevered, with tongues fighting for dominance and hands clutching desperately. After a few moments, with great difficulty he forced himself to pull away from her. Rose was breathless and flushed with desire, and he wondered if he appeared the same. Forcing his heartsrate to slow, he slipped her hand in his and led her away from the door, and it closed behind them. He lifted his other hand, snapped his fingers and the lights lowered.

"I see you have some new moves," she said, still slightly breathless. She grinned at him, in the tongue-touched way she had which had always made his hearts stutter, even when he had worn a leather jacket.

"A few," he replied, and he grinned back at her, his eyes twinkling.

As music began to fill the room, he gently tugged on her hand and she spun into his arms, her dress swirling around her. They began to sway to the music.

_At last_  
My love has come along  
My lonely days are over  
And life is like a song 

"I recognize this one from the club," she said.

"Etta James," he told her. "Lovely woman, and in my opinion, this is the best version of this song ever produced."

With one hand spread across the soft, smooth skin of her back, the other holding her hand, he slowly led her in an intricate dance around the console, treasuring the moment. The song, the dance, her in his arms, all meant far more to him than he wanted to admit.

"Can I make a request?" she asked when the song ended and they had stopped. "A song request of my own."

"Of course," he answered. "All you have to do is think it. The TARDIS might get into your mind, but you also get into hers. Just ask her."

She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she reopened them the sound of a piano filled the room. His eyes met hers, and his breath caught as he recognized the opening strains of the song she had chosen.

_Oh, my love, my darling_  
I've hungered for your touch  
A long, lonely time 

Not even pretending to dance anymore, he stared at her as she lifted a hand to caress his face, and his hearts pounded when he saw the love in her eyes. Not just desire, but love. And not just for the men he'd been, but for who he was now as well.

_And time goes by so slowly_  
And time can do so much  
Are you still mine? 

As the music continued to play, the Doctor no longer could hold back. She gasped when he fisted his hand in her hair and roughly pulled her head back. He moved his mouth to her neck and then, after first gently sucking at her pulse point, he traced a line downwards to the hollow of her throat. She quietly moaned, running her fingers through his hair and caressing the back of his neck.

And then she gently pushed him away.

Panting, he looked at her in confusion.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought…"

She moved a finger to his lips.

"Shh," she murmured. And as the music swelled, she dropped her hand to entwine her fingers with his, and she led him silently from the room.

_I need your love_  
I need your love  
God speed your love to me. 


	7. Chapter Seven

As Rose led him down the long corridor, a tiny voice in the back of the Doctor’s mind told him that this was wrong. Not only was it putting his own timeline at risk, it would certainly change hers as well. He wanted to ignore the voice, bury it deep so it would stop pestering him, and he would have, if the consequences were only to himself. But he couldn’t do that to Rose. No longer was this a simple day trip for her to rejuvenate and recover from her last several weeks; somehow it had changed into something entirely different, and he needed to make certain that this was what she really wanted.

He pulled her to a stop, fully intending to talk to her, to warn her of the possible consequences of their actions, to tell her that their futures, and his past, might change in ways he couldn’t predict. But then there was the way her hair fell softly in waves around her face, the way her eyes were so large, her pupils fathomless and dark with desire, the way the bare skin of her back was so smooth and warm and soft, and the way the bodice of her dress hugged the soft curves of her breasts, curves he suddenly realized he was already caressing through the thin, silky material. 

“Oh, Rose,” he said helplessly. Slipping his hands down to her hips, he roughly pulled her towards him and then moved to cup the soft globes of her arse in his hands. As he lowered his head to kiss her open, waiting lips, he thrust his hips against her, intending to leave her no doubt where the night was headed if they continued. 

A small, almost miniscule part of him wanted her to stop him, stop _them_ from continuing, but a far greater portion of himself felt triumphant when she reached around him and cupped his arse as well, thrusting back at him and holding him firmly against herself.

Her mouth moved to his neck, sucking a path downward as he had earlier, and he closed his eyes and sighed in pleasure. When she reached his Adam’s apple, she gently scraped it with her teeth, the tiniest sensation but enough so that a sliver of reason returned to his brain. But only a sliver.

Pulling away and panting slightly, he opened his eyes and met hers. He shook his head.

“No, we can’t,” he said breathlessly, but before she could protest, he continued. “Not… here. Not in the hall. The walls aren’t smooth and the floor is too hard and when I am deep inside you with you writhing under me I want you in my bed.”

Her eyes widened at his words and she nodded in agreement, but then slipped a hand between them and squeezed him through his trousers. He hissed and, unable to stop himself, thrust forward.

“You canna be doin’ that unless you want me to take you right here on the floor no matter how hard it is,” he said, his accent thickening with the increase of his desire for her. 

Grinning, she let go of him. He stifled an involuntary moan of protest and pulled her in for a searing kiss, backing her against the wall and pulling one of her legs up over his hip. While she clutched at the fabric of his shirt, he pressed into her and she moaned into his mouth.

“Bedroom,” he said against her lips. “Bed. Don’t care whose so long as it’s close.”

She nodded, panting. “The room I changed in is just ahead. Practically the next door.”

He pulled away from her just enough to stare in her eyes in disbelief. “Now why dinna ya say so before?”

She bit her lower lip and giggled. “Kinda got… distracted.”

He grinned at her crookedly. “I’d like to _distract_ you a lot more.”

“You’d better,” she said.

She leaned forward to kiss him, and he thrust against her again. This time it was intentional and with an upward motion of his hips, grinding hard enough to lift her off the floor several inches. In response she moved the leg over his hip to rub her calf and foot up his thigh to his arse, trying to be careful not to poke him with the thin heel of her shoe.

“You’d better stop that,” he growled.

“You started it,” she reminded him with a laugh.

“And I’m bloody well gonna finish it,” he told her firmly. He stepped backwards, causing her to drop abruptly, and caught her, making sure she landed on her feet. “So where’s that damned bedroom you were mentioning?” 

“Right over here,” she said. 

Rose led him to an open door barely ten feet along the corridor, but she turned when he didn’t immediately follow her in.

The Doctor stood in the doorway, staring at her in wonder. She was always beautiful, but now as the light from the hall shined on her in the relative darkness of the room, for an instant she almost seemed to glow as she had as Bad Wolf. All of a sudden he wondered if the entire day had been a dream, from the moment he had found himself on the Powell Estate till now. Perhaps it was all a glorious fantasy existing soli in his mind that he would soon wake up from or a fevered hallucination, a delayed reaction to a difficult regeneration, and he was overwhelmed with the need to convince himself she was real.

“Rose Tyler,” he began, slightly shaking his head, and then was unable to finish the thought. 

She stretched out her hand to him.

Quickly closing the distance between them, he cupped her face in his hands and drew a ragged breath.

“Tell me you’re real,” he said, a touch of desperation creeping into his voice. “Tell me you’re really and truly here and that all this hasn’t been just some psychotic break I’m having.”

Rose was used to his mercurial moods, bouncing from one to the next without a break in between, but this seemed different somehow. She searched his face in concern, wondering not for the first time how he had lost her and what he had gone through afterwards. Knowing he wouldn’t answer if she asked, instead she reached up to caress his face.

“Yes,” she assured him gently, “I’m really and truly here.”

He pursed his lips disbelievingly, and finally shook his head. “If this isn’t real, I don’t care.” 

He kissed her roughly, hard enough that she tasted blood, and she reveled in it, not entirely believing herself that this was happening with the Doctor. After a moment, she felt his hands move to the nape of her neck and a momentary draft as the halter of her dress dropped to her waist. Cooler air touched warm bare skin until one of his hands moved to gently cup and knead her breast. The other he covered with his mouth, nipping and sucking, bringing her already taut nipples to a sharp peak. She moaned as a fresh wave of desire shot through her to her core. 

All of a sudden it wasn’t nearly enough. She needed more.

“Doctor,” she whispered urgently, and pulled him upward. She moved her hands to his shirt, fumbling with the buttons in her haste, and he moved her hands to finish the job. After shrugging off his outer garments, he began to pull off the vest he was wearing underneath.

Unwilling to wait for him to finish undressing, she unfastened his trousers and slipped a hand in his pants. She was rewarded when she felt him twitch against her fingertips.

He raised one eyebrow and smirked at her.

“I warned you about that,” he told her as he unzipped the back of her dress, allowing it to fall to the floor. His thin frame belying his strength, he then easily swept her up in his arms and tossed her on the bed. She giggled as she bounced several times on the mattress.

After toeing off his own shoes he climbed onto the bed. Still giggling, she scooted backwards until she hit the headboard. Grabbing one of her ankles, he pulled her closer and pulled off one of her shoes. He tossed it over his shoulder, not paying attention to where it went. After the other quickly followed, her laughter stopped and her breath caught as he reached up and slowly pulled off her knickers. As she watched, his lips moved to the arch of her foot. He kissed up the inside of her calf to her knee, moving one hand to slip around the outside of her leg while he slowly caressed the inside of the other, gently moving her legs apart. He looked up and their eyes met while he placed open-mouthed kisses up the inside of her thigh. 

When he reached her core, she felt his warm breath puff gently against her center as he nuzzled her folds. Suddenly desperate to touch him, she moved her hands to bury her fingertips in his short hair. Conflicting desires warred within her; she wanted to pull him up to kiss him but at the same time she wanted to hold him in place. Instead, she instinctively spread her legs wider and tilted her hips to allow him greater access.

Over the years Rose had imagined, or more fantasized to be honest, what shagging the Doctor would be like. Long ago she had come to the conclusion that with her first Doctor it would be against a wall in a back alley somewhere, after a fit of jealousy or while on the run from whomever was chasing them at the time. It would be quick and rough, with them only half undressed in their hurry and punctuated by _now_ and _more_ and _harder_ and _fuck_ from both of them. With her second Doctor, she had thought it would be slower; he would talk dirty to her the whole time, whispering in her ear all the things he was doing to her and what he wanted her to do to him. Or perhaps not the whole time. She had always imagined there would be a great deal of tongue, perhaps with it starting around the shell of her ear and tracing a path downward along the column of her neck and on her breasts, down her belly to circle her clit and ultimately bury itself between her legs.

This was neither. Or perhaps it was both, she thought. And then, closing her eyes and dropping her head backwards as hands caressed and lips kissed, she couldn’t think at all.

Wave upon wave of pleasure shot through her as his tongue teased her clit and his long slender fingers dipped inside her. Finally, when she didn’t think she could take any more, he curled his fingers to put pressure exactly where she needed it. Arching her back, she cried out as she shattered into a million pieces. 

As she fell back against the mattress, the Doctor sat back on his heels and looked at her. She was gorgeous, all flushed and glowing as a result of her orgasm. One he gave her. When she met his eyes, he smirked at her.

“Good?” he asked.

“It was… nice,” she said, determined to wipe the smug grin he wore off his face. It didn’t work.

“Nice?” he asked in disbelief as he began to crawl up her body. “It was bloody fantastic and you just won’t admit it.”

“It was good,” she allowed. She pushed him onto his back and straddled his knees. “But now it’s my turn.”

The Doctor propped himself up on his elbows and watched as she grabbed the waistband of his trousers and worked them down over his hips. When he didn’t lift up to help her, she looked at him pointedly and nodded in the direction of his pants.

“You’re doing fine,” he told her.

Rose tightened her lips and firmly grasped the waistband of his pants, yanking them down and his trousers with them, throwing them on the floor once they were off. And then she glanced upward, only to stare at him wide-eyed. Although he looked altogether human in this as he did in every other way, as he stood proudly erect he seemed...

“Problem?” he asked amusedly.

“You think you’re so impressive,” she said. 

He nodded at himself. “I think you can see for yourself that I am impressive,” he said, and she rolled her eyes, not wanting to admit to him he was right.

She took his rigid length in hand, feeling steel under the softness of his skin. She stroked him, once, twice, before running her thumb over the head and frenulum and his smirk finally faded. 

She dropped her head and he watched, jaw slack and eyes heavy-lidded with desire, as she kissed him base to tip. But when she took him into her mouth, his eyes rolled backwards and he let out a moan, a long low sound a full octave below his natural tenor. At the intensity of the feeling, which was both too much and not nearly enough, he snapped.

He flipped her over onto her back, moving to hold her hands above her head while he settled on his knees between her thighs. Firmly holding her wrists with one hand, he used the other to guide himself into her opening and he heard her gasp as he pushed deep inside her. She was hot and slick and tight and the sensation was almost overwhelming. He moved his hand to the underside of her thigh, curling his fingertips to move her hips in better position and he pulled out, only to slide back inside her. 

His first strokes were long and slow, pulling almost all the way out before driving himself back inside. Once he was buried as deeply as he could go, he began to rock, grinding against her clit with his pelvis. Desperate to touch him, she struggled to pull her arms away but he held her fast. Turned on beyond belief, she swore as tension unexpectedly coiled deep in her womb, and she ground back, seeking another release. 

Again and again he ground against her. The exquisite torture built; he wanted, needed to thrust, but he willed himself to wait.

“Rose, please, come for me,” he said desperately. 

She began to keen and he moved harder against her, knowing she was close and trying to drive her forward. Finally she came, long and hard and loudly, her vaginal walls clenching tightly around him.

It was the signal he had been waiting for and not a moment too soon as he was certain he couldn’t have waited much longer. Letting go of her wrists and moving his arms to rest his weight on his elbows, he began to move, sliding in and out faster than before, chasing his own release. Still in the throes of her own, her legs wrapped around his thighs and her hands, now free, clutched at him, her nails digging into his arse as she wordlessly urged him on and tried to push him deeper still.

Finally, shouting her name, his body stiffened as he pulsed inside of her. Afterwards, panting and willing his hearts to slow, he dropped his forehead to rest against hers.

“I lo…” she started and then stopped herself, kissing him instead. It was long and lingering, full of the emotion she wasn’t allowing herself to say. Afterwards, he pulled away from her just far enough to look into her eyes.

“Rose, please, please say it,” he begged. “You said it before, and I’ve waited centuries to hear it again.”

“I love you,” she told him, her voice breaking a little.

“Oh, Rose Tyler, I love you, too. And please don’t you ever, ever forget it.”


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incident alluded to and the quote in italics at the end of this chapter are both from the episode The Five Doctors.

**Chapter Eight**

_He loves me_ , Rose thought. _He really and properly loves me._

They were lying together in bed, her head on his shoulder, her hand flat on his chest and one of her legs thrown across both of his. He had one arm loosely wrapped around her and his fingers were lightly tracing circular patterns on her arm. And under the navy blue cotton sheet that was draped over them they were naked. They were both naked. In bed. 

The whole situation was surreal. She was naked in bed with the Doctor. And they had just shagged. Twice.

But as strange as the situation was, it was nothing compared to what he had said. 

She knew he cared about her, even before she had met this him in the park in the Powell Estate that morning. But after Sarah Jane, and particularly after Reinette, she had been certain that that’s all it was. Even after today, spending a day with this him, she hadn’t thought the feelings he had went beyond affection and desire.

But love… and what’s more him actually saying it to her…

After the first time they had shagged—in what she had thought was the best shag of her life—she had begun to tell him she loved him but had stopped herself. She was afraid of how he would react, that she would scare him off and he would retreat behind the ‘curse of the Time Lords’, and after shagging she just couldn’t open herself up to that kind of rejection. So she had kissed him instead.

But then he had begged for her to say it.

_“Rose, please, please say it. You said it before, and I’ve waited centuries to hear it again.”_

_“I love you,” she told him, her voice breaking a little._

_“Oh, Rose Tyler, I love you, too. And please don’t you ever, ever forget it.”_

With his words, again her world seemed to tilt on its axis. No, this time it was totally exploded like the Death Star in Star Wars. 

After that they had shagged again. And she had realized she had been wrong earlier. As fantastic as it had been the first time with him, the second was the best shag of her life. 

No, it had been more than that. They had made love, and she didn’t think that she had ever done that before. Oh, she had shagged before, obviously, but made love? No. Not like this. 

_Soft kisses placed on her forehead, eyelids, cheeks, lips…_  
Words of love whispered in her ear and against her skin…  
Fingers gently caressing her shoulders, breasts, hips, arse…  
Slowly moving together in the darkness of the room…  
Quiet cries of ecstasy… 

No, it had never been like this. 

His voice broke into her thoughts, startling her.

“Penny for ‘em,” he said. 

Despite the newfound intimacy between them, despite what they had just done, she didn’t think she could tell him what she had been thinking about. She wasn’t even sure she had the words for all the emotions surging through her at the moment. Instead, she looked up at him as she scrambled for something to say.

“So, where are we?” she asked.

“We’re right where we were before, Rose,” he said. “Still floating in space just outside the Rose Nebula.”

She laughed and shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I meant, did you ever figure out whose room we’re in?”

He took a moment to look around the room thoughtfully. “Mine, I think,” he said.

“You think? You don’t know?”

“You know how the TARDIS is, Rose. She changes things around all the time. And if this is my room, it’s a lot different than I remember. Oh, the bookcase and the armchair were here, and maybe that little table in the corner, but there wasn’t really a bed in here before.”

“There wasn’t a bed?” she asked. “What did you sleep on?”

He chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“Try me,” she said.

“A hammock,” he told her.

“No,” she said.

“Yep.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “Seriously?” When he shrugged in acknowledgement, she shook her head and laughed. “Last you must have been a very interesting person.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” he answered and laughed ruefully. “I have to say one thing though. I’m grateful for the bed. The activities we just engaged in would have been much more complicated in the hammock.”

“That’s for sure,” she said emphatically. “It would have been interesting to try, though. If anyone could do it, it would be us.” Grinning at the thought, she put her head back on his shoulder and paused for a second before continuing. “If I’d known you could shag like that I’d have jumped you after the first time we had chips.” Her grin widened, the tip of her tongue touching her teeth, as she imagined pushing her first Doctor against a coral strut and snogging him senseless before shagging him within an inch of his life.

He laughed, and the sound rumbled deep in his chest. “If I’d known it could be like this…” 

His voice trailed off, and she looked up at him, her smile fading. There had been something in his voice, something she would have missed if she hadn’t known him so well.

“This was the first time for us, wasn’t it? Not just for me, but for you too.”

He looked away from her and didn’t answer immediately.

“You know I can’t answer that, Rose,” he told her.

“I think you just did,” she said quietly.

~oOo~

The Doctor had been in the park for a while, waiting for Clara—or better yet, Rose—to join him. Never one to sit still for long, after sitting down on a bench he had immediately gotten back up and begun to pace back and forth in front of it, periodically sitting down only to jump back up and begin to pace again. Just as he had been about to give up on waiting, he saw Clara enter from the far side of the park and stalked up to her impatiently.

“Where have you been?” the Doctor demanded. “I’ve been here over an hour.”

“Oh, don’t start,” Clara said, scowling at him. She led the way back to the bench, and they both sat down on it. “I spent over three hours watching afternoon telly and listening to Jackie complain about someone on the phone. From her description, I assumed it was you.”

“Why?” he asked sharply. “What did she say?”

“Oh, just something about someone eating everything in sight and not fixing her washing machine,” she said. “She was right, by the way. There was hardly anything in the kitchen. I checked. I eventually had to leave just so I could get something to eat.”

He ignored the implied accusation.

“And there was no sign of Rose?”

Clara shook her head. “Jackie didn’t know where she was, but she didn’t seem worried about it. I’m guessing that she thinks Rose is with you.”

“And she’s probably right,” he said. “She probably is with me, just not this me.” He sighed loudly in frustration. Restless, he stood and began to pace again. “Tell me what you know about me, or him rather. Why would he do this?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said.

“We’re way beyond the point where we have to worry about maintaining the timelines,” he said. “I’ve been feeling the timelines alter all day. I need to know what you know in order to fix this.” 

She held up a hand. 

“No, I mean I literally can’t tell you. I don’t know why you do anything you do. Sometimes I don’t think you know, either.”

He began to scowl at her when all of a sudden he felt a chill come over him, as if icy fingers had run down his spine. Another timeline shift, he thought. Shaking it off, he continued his questioning of Clara.

“Okay, let’s go over all this again,” he said. “You know me and you know who Rose is…”

“Who?” Clara asked.

“Rose.” At the blank look on her face, he stared at her. “You know who Rose is. I travel with her. You just spent three hours drinking tea and watching bad telly at her mother’s flat.”

Wrinkling her forehead and pursing her lips, Clara shook her head slowly. “I don’t know who Rose is. I mean… I feel like I should know who she is, but I don’t remember. And I don’t remember having tea at someone’s flat either.”

“Oh, this is bad,” he told her. “This is really, really bad. This is more than just a car wreck on the M-5 bad, this is the Titanic, the Hindenburg, Krakatoa, and Pompeii rolled into one, with a side order of the Black Plague for good measure. Your timeline is changing for some reason.” He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of the depths of his pocket. It whirred and its tip lit up blue as he began to scan her.

“ _My_ timeline?” she asked worriedly. She swallowed hard. “My timeline is shifting?”

He nodded absently, studying the readings he got, and then began to scan himself.

“Yes,” he said, examining his own readings and frowning. “I’ve been feeling timeshifts all day. It’s as if a rock was thrown into a pond, making waves across the surface, and for some strange reason they are hitting you before they are hitting me.” At her stricken look, he tried to reassure her with a confidence he didn’t feel while he scanned her again. “It’s not as bad as I thought. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Your timeline has only shifted a little. The worst that could happen to you is you just wouldn’t meet me.”

Her eyes widened. “I wouldn’t meet you? Oh, that’s bad. Really, really bad. Much worse than you think. And much more for you than it is for me.” 

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You remember what you said about the Titanic and Krakatoa? That’s nothing compared to how bad this would be for you. It’s supernova bad.”

"Why... How... No, don't answer that. I'm not sure I should know. I'm not sure I _want_ to know." He shook his head. “I’ve got to see how far this is spreading,” he said. He turned and began to jog away from her.

She stood up and began to follow him. “Where are you going?” she called.

“To see Jackie. I need to know if this is affecting her yet.” He noticed her beginning to follow and pointed a finger at her. “You stay here.” To his amazement, she turned and sat down again on the bench. “What do you know?” he muttered to himself as he left the park. “I’ve finally found a companion who listens. Too bad I might never meet her.”

~oOo~

Lying in his new bed, thoughtfully provided by the TARDIS, the twelfth Doctor looked down at the young woman sleeping in his arms. And smiled. Her hair was a mess, a mess he had helped create, and was spread out across his shoulder and partially covering her face.

He reached up and gently ran a hand over her hair, brushing it out of her face and smoothing it down a bit. Despite the risk of waking her, he couldn’t stop touching her. He still couldn’t believe she was here. Soft and warm and alive and _here_ , she was in his arms and in his bed. She had one arm thrown over his chest and a leg across his, as if she were trying to hold him in place even in her sleep. Perhaps she was, considering his history of running from emotional entanglements and ‘domestics’. He had certainly run enough from her in his time with her.

Lying in bed with her like this, he was almost overwhelmed with jealousy of his meta-crisis self: making love to her every night, waking next to her every morning, spending the rest of his life with her. Something he had wanted so desperately back then. 

Something he found he still wanted. And just as desperately.

Without waking, she sighed and tightened her grip on him and he placed a soft kiss on the top of her head. He had missed her so much over the years. And he had been a fool, wasting so much time with her before, time he could have spent like this, arms and legs wrapped around one another, skin flushed and tingling from lovemaking. 

For one wild moment he considered not bringing her back and allowed himself the brief fantasy of traveling with her again. Long days spent hand in hand, saving the universe and running for their lives. Long nights spent just like this, making love until the sounds of their passion echoed through the TARDIS.

But it was impossible.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. If this was all he was going to have of her, he wanted to commit every detail to memory: the desire in her eyes when he had entered her for the first time, the sound of her crying out his name as she came, the heady scent of sex which still surrounded them. 

Once he was certain he would never forget an instant of the last few hours, he carefully extricated himself from under her, trying not to wake her. He was loath to leave her side for even an instant, but he felt the need to have a conversation with the TARDIS, one he couldn’t have with Rose in the room, not even while she was asleep.

He quickly dressed but just before he walked through the doorway he turned back. She had rolled over, managing to tangle herself in the sheet. It did little to preserve her modesty; it was wrapped around her waist, leaving her breasts and the curve of her bum exposed, and he thought the Rose Nebula had nothing on the sight of Rose in his bed.

More than anything he wanted to return to bed and make love to her again. Fighting the impulse, he forced himself to leave the room and rushed to the console room. Once there he exploded.

“Why?” he yelled at the ceiling. “Why did you do this to me? Why bring her back into my life like this just so I could lose her again? How many times must I give her up? I can’t do it again! I can’t!”

~oOo~

The Doctor rushed up the stairs to Jackie’s flat. Not wanting to wait for Jackie to answer the door, he used his sonic to let himself in.

“And I don’t know what they do all day, Madge, and frankly I don’t wanna know, but you’d think he could spend five minutes fixing my washer.” At the sound of the door, Jackie turned and spotted him. “Oh, himself is here. I’ve gotta go. Yeah, he let himself in again.” Once she rang off, she glared at him. “I wish you wouldn’t do that. Knock like a normal person, would you?” She looked past him. “Where’s Rose?”

Well, that answered that. Rose wasn’t at the flat.

“Oh, back at the TARDIS,” he said, the lie coming easily. If it was a lie, he thought.

“Then what are you doin’ here?” she asked. “I’m outa bananas and biscuits, although you can take the raspberry jam and the marmalade with you, since you stuck your fingers in them.”

“Although I appreciate the offer,” he said, not entirely insincerely, “I’m actually trying to find Rose’s mobile. She thinks she may have left it here.” He looked half-heartedly, moving the accumulated clutter on the coffee table around to search under newspapers and magazines. He was certain it wasn’t there, but he still held out a sliver of hope that the reason she hadn’t answered any of his calls was because she had forgotten her phone in the flat.

“Well, I haven’t seen it,” she said. She joined in the search, first lifting up couch cushions and then bending down to look under the furniture. 

“I’ll just check her bedroom, shall I?” he asked. As he predicted, she objected.

“No,” she said sharply. “I’ll check her bedroom. You check the kitchen.”

He nodded. That’s where he wanted to be anyway. Once there, he checked the counter and the sink. There had been a half-filled mug of tea on a table near Jackie when he had entered the flat; it had had a lipstick print on the edge in Jackie’s color. 

Shuddering at the thought that he knew Jackie well enough to recognize the color of her lipstick, he quickly looked around the kitchen. There hadn’t been an extra mug on the table in the lounge, and there wasn’t one in here: no spare mug sitting on the counter, no empty mug sitting in the sink waiting to be washed, and the only dishes in the drying rack were the ones from breakfast. He didn’t know Clara well enough to know if she were the type of person to wash and put away a mug in someone else’s home, but the evidence pointed to her not being there that day.

But how was he supposed to ask Jackie if she had met a young, pretty brunette that he knew without getting a slap?

Still, he had to check. 

“Did someone stop by looking for Rose today?” he called conversationally.

“No,” she said, entering the kitchen. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason.”

She stared at him. “If there’s no reason, why bother asking?”

He opened his mouth to reply, and gasped instead as he felt a shooting pain radiate from his left heart through his chest. 

“Are you alright?” Instead of the sarcastic tone she often used with him, she had genuine concern in her voice.

“Fine,” he said through his teeth, trying to mask the pain he felt. “I’m just going to... go find Rose..." he swallowed hard, "and tell her her mobile’s not here.” He turned and fled before she could question him any further.

Once out of the flat, he leaned against the door and grimaced, realizing the timeline shifts were beginning to affect him now as well. The last time he had felt anything like this was back in his fifth life, when whole sections of his past lives were being taken out of time.

For some reason he didn't understand, not only was his future changing but his past was changing too.

_A man is the sum of his memories. A Time Lord even more so._

Time was changing too rapidly for his body to cope, and there was nothing he could do about it.


	9. Chapter Nine

The tenth Doctor slowly walked down the stairwell of Bucknall House, wincing and stopping periodically to catch his breath. The pain in his chest was dissipating somewhat, but the mere fact that he had had it was troubling to say the least.

"Troubling," he scoffed to himself. "It's a personal crisis and a potential catastrophe."

Gritting his teeth, he made his way back to the park where, to his relief, Clara was still waiting for him on the bench.

"Alright," he said as he sat down next to her, "who are you, and what do you have to do with all of this?"

"What do you mean?"

"The changes to the timeline have accelerated, and they aren't just affecting me, they're affecting you as well. Now it would be one thing if the changes just had to do with my future, but they have begun to affect my past, and I don't know why." His eyes narrowed at her. "But you do. You started to tell me why before I went to see Jackie."

"And you told me you didn't want to know," she reminded him.

He felt another twinge and shook his head.

"I think I have to. I need to know why this is happening."

She didn't answer immediately. "I think the reason all of this is happening," she said eventually, "is that I saved your life."

"So? Lots of people have saved my life. If I had a banana for every time someone saved my life—well, I'd have a lot of bananas, I suppose. But saving my life would only affect my future, not my past."

She shook her head. "No. I saved your life before we met. And helped you in other ways as well."

"Really?"

"You don't sound surprised."

"Time Lord," he said as if that explained everything. And perhaps it did, she thought. "Time twists and turns are part and parcel for a Time Lord, standard operating procedure. I haven't met you, but you've met me. You haven't met me, but I've already said goodbye to you. You've influenced my life before we knew each other. But it all seems dependent on us meeting eventually."

Brow furrowed, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Well, I obviously still meet you because you still remember me, and because I'm still here. And you're still here. But if I don't meet you at the same time, if for some reason our meeting is delayed, something in my past could change. I could turn left instead of right. I could arrive somewhere earlier or later than I originally did. Even a few minutes could make a difference…" He looked at her sharply. "I could miss meeting Rose. And if I missed meeting her, she wouldn't have survived in the basement of Henrik's. And she wouldn't have been there to save my life on Satellite Five."

He shook his head. "No, the changes haven't been that bad yet. Jackie still remembers me. But any more changes and we'll be smack dab in the middle of a paradox."

~oOo~

Stomping down the stairs to the area directly surrounding the console, the twelfth Doctor railed at the ceiling.

"How am I supposed to do this, hmm? Am I supposed to just dump her off at the Powell Estate, give her a peck on the forehead and leave her with my idiot younger self who STILL doesn't realize what he's got and has no idea how little time he has left?"

Wishing for the first time in centuries that he still had his rubber mallet, he shouted in the direction of the Time Rotor. "And after I PROMISED her I wouldn't dump her off like I did Sarah Jane, now I'm supposed to do it for a _second_ time? I CAN'T DO THAT! NOT AGAIN!"

As he stalked around the console, his mind raced through possibilities, searching for any way he could avoid returning her to her own timeline. "Maybe I can convince her to stay a little longer," he said. "Maybe I can even convince her to travel with me. I could prevent her from being trapped in the parallel universe."

Every light on the console began to flash in warning. "I know, I know. I can't. But there must be _something_ I can do."

As the lights continued to flash urgently, he sank down onto the stairs and dropped his head in his hands. "Why would you do this to me?"

The lights dimmed and all of a sudden he could feel the TARDIS' equivalent of sorrow, grief and loneliness. It surrounded him, overwhelmed him, moving his own feelings to the background.

"Oh," he breathed. "You missed her too. But why bring me back now? After all these years, why now?"

In front of him an image appeared of a burst of blinding golden light that was replaced by the formation of his current body. As the image faded, the lights in the room briefly changed color, taking on a slight tinge of mauve before returning to their normal color.

"You were worried about me? It was a bit of a rough regeneration, I have to admit. But aren't they all?"

The ever present hum of the Time Rotor grew quieter.

"Yeah. Not like this one," he admitted. "And you thought I needed someone to help me through it." His mouth quirked in a small smile. "And you didn't think Clara could do it."

The lights brightened slightly as if in agreement.

"But why now? Why now in her timeline?"

This time, the TARDIS didn't react, and the Doctor thought about where exactly in her timeline she was. She had just gone through the business with Reinette, and even more, the business with Pete's World. And losing Mickey.

"So she needed me as much as I needed her," he said quietly. "Is that it?"

The lights brightened a little more, and he remembered her telling him that she had considered leaving, telling him when she still thought of him as "Harry" that she needed a break and she was afraid to ask for one.

He swallowed hard. "Was I going to lose her back then if we didn't come?"

Now the lights came full on.

"So this has been a time loop? I was always meant to come back?" He paused thoughtfully. "But she wasn't supposed to figure out who I was, was she?"

At that the TARDIS began to hum.

"So I was supposed to come back and help her out, and in doing so she would help me. But then she figured out who I was and I convinced her to come with me and things began to change. No," he corrected himself, "I felt things begin to change even before that." Brow furrowed, he tried to remember all the details of their conversation. Then his eyes opened wide in shock. "Oh, this was my fault. It started when I referred to my idiot younger self as her boyfriend, and it snowballed from there."

Taking a deep breath and letting it out in a rush, he dropped an elbow on one knee and pinched the bridge of his nose. "How much has changed?"

The hum of the Rotor grew, and the lights tinged mauve again.

"That much?" He sighed heavily and stood up. "I have to take her back. But not to the way things were," he said, shaking a finger at the Time Rotor. "I think it's time to teach past me a lesson."

The Time Rotor hummed.

"So you agree. I'll just let you handle that, shall I? And in the meantime I'll go find Rose."

~oOo~

Rose woke up suddenly from a deep sleep to the sound of her mobile ringing. She blindly reached over to the nightstand.

"Where is it? Where is it?" she muttered. To her relief it stopped ringing, and she buried her head under her pillow and tried to get back to sleep.

To her frustration it started ringing again, and this time she noticed it sounded muffled. Maybe because of the pillow over her head, she thought. No, it had sounded muffled the first time before she put the pillow on her head.

For a moment, she wondered whether it would stop ringing if she just ignored it. It was worth a try, she thought. Distantly noticing she felt cold, she reached down, grabbed the sheet, and pulled it over her head as well.

To her relief, the ringing stopped and she snuggled under the sheet, determined to go back to sleep.

It began ringing again.

Muttering a curse that turned into a loud yawn, she pulled the sheet and pillow off of her head and opened her eyes to an unfamiliar room.

And realized she was naked.

"Wha…" she started. And then her eyes opened wide as the memories of last night came flooding back. A slow smile spread across her face.

The phone stopped ringing only to immediately start again.

Rose suddenly remembered her mobile was in the pocket of her jeans. Which were hanging in the en suite. Not in any particular hurry to answer her phone, she got up and stretched before she wrapped the sheet around her and crossed to the bathroom. As she walked across the room, she noticed a mild, not entirely unpleasant soreness between her legs which only served to remind her just how long it had been since the last time she had shagged.

But it had _definitely_ been worth the wait, she thought, chuckling to herself.

Once in the bathroom she pulled the mobile out of her pocket and gave it a quick glance before answering.

"Hi, Mum," she said as she walked back out into the bedroom. "Sorry it took so long to answer. Yeah, I couldn't find it at first. How did you know?"

Only half paying attention to her mother's answer, she looked up to see the Doctor in the doorway. She gave him a small wave and a grin before turning her attention back to her mother.

"What? Dinner? Oh," she said, her grin fading. She glanced at the Doctor and noticed the somber expression on his face. "You want to know if the Doctor and I are going to be there for dinner. I, uh, I don't know, Mum. No, don't go out to the shops. If we come, we'll get Chinese or something, yeah? Okay. See you later. Love you too."

She rang off and stared at her phone for a moment.

"That, uh, that was Mum," she stammered. "She, uh, wanted to know if we were coming to dinner because she'd have to go out and get something if we were." She paused. "Me and, uh, other you."

He didn't answer, and she was almost afraid to look up at him.

"Mum called like, three or four times in a row," she continued. "I've got all these missed calls." She scrolled through the list. "Huh. That's strange. I've got a half a dozen calls labeled the TARDIS. Why would… Oh."

Rose pressed play and speaker. The younger Doctor's clear tenor filled the suddenly silent room.

_"Rose? Something odd is going on, and I just wanted to make sure you were alright. Stop by the TARDIS when you get this."_

Despite the casualness of his tone, she could hear the worry in his voice, and she felt a twinge of guilt for leaving without letting anyone know she was going.

And hearing his voice made her heart ache. Oh, how she missed him. But how could she miss him when he was standing right in front of her?

The mobile beeped and then switched to the next call.

_"Rose, where are you? You aren't picking up your phone, and you always pick up. If you can't make it here, ring me on the TARDIS phone."_

There was a pause, and another beep, and then a new message.

_"Uh, Rose? Where are you? Are you alright? Just wanted to make sure that, uh, a lupine wavelength haemovariform or a Slitheen or something didn't get you."_ There was the sound of false laughter, and then the call disconnected. The next few calls were simple hang ups, and she glanced up at the Doctor in front of her. She bit her lip nervously.

"It's, uh, time for me to go back, isn't it?" she asked.

In response, he crossed over to her and pulled her into his arms. She sniffed, trying to hold back tears.

"You know I love you, yeah?" she said into his shoulder. "Both this you and that you."

"Same man, Rose," he said. He took the phone from her and set it down on the table and then tilted her chin up so he could look in her eyes. "And I love you too, both now and back then. But you promised me 24 hours, and it's only been a little over 21. Please stay for just a little bit longer. It won't matter to him, and it will make the world of difference to me."

She nodded. Reaching up to cup his face, she stood on her tiptoes and gently kissed him. And knowing it was the last time for both of them, she let the sheet fall to the floor.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just noticed that for some reason the full chapter is not appearing here, so I'm editing this to include it.

Rose entered the console room, freshly showered and wearing the clothes she had been in the park the previous day. The Time Rotor was already rising and falling which she knew meant they were already underway. She drew in a ragged breath.

The twelfth Doctor was vigorously polishing the console with what looked like a handkerchief and didn't look up. Leaning against the doorway, she watched him for a few minutes. She knew he knew she was there, but instead of looking up he moved to polishing the railing, his back towards her as if he didn't want to accidentally see her.

_Typical Doctor behavior when trying to avoid something difficult_ , she thought with a pang. _Always the same man._

"I set the coordinates for the Powell Estate, half an hour after we left," he said eventually, more than a hint of the Scottish burr creeping into his voice that she knew he got when he was emotional. He still didn't look at her. "That should allow for enough time for the phone calls that you received to be made by them yet not be long enough for them to really worry about you or create a paradox from you being with me."

"Doctor, I… I know I have to go back," she said, "but do I have to go back quite yet?"

At that, he finally looked at her. "Oh, Rose, the longer you're with me the harder it will be for me to let you go."

At the grief she heard in his voice, she pursed her lips and rushed to him, pulling him into her arms. His arms tightened around her and he buried his face in her hair.

"Once you pick up Clara," she said into his shoulder, "I'm not going to see you again, am I?"

He pulled away from her far enough to look deeply into her eyes. "You're going to be with me for a long, long time," he promised. "Just not this me."

"I know," she said. "But I'm going to miss this you."

"Rose Tyler, I'm gonna miss you too."

~oOo~

The tenth Doctor and Clara sat on the bench in the park in the Powell Estate, largely because they had nowhere else to go. Jackie's flat was out. Since she no longer remembered Clara, the Doctor didn't know how to explain her presence. Nor did he know how to explain to her why Rose wasn't with him, or more specifically that she was probably with an older version of him. Either way, she wasn't here.

Restless, he considered returning to the TARDIS, but with it still not working properly he'd just be sitting around in the console room. He might as well sit here for the moment.

"Have you thought about the possibility that they aren't coming back, or at least not anytime soon?" Clara asked, interrupting his thoughts.

"No, of course not," he said. "I wouldn't do that. Would I?"

"I'm not sure," she said thoughtfully. "You've been a bit odd ever since your regeneration."

"How long has it been?"

"About a week."

"Ahh," he said. "Well that explains some of this. It can take a little time to settle into a regeneration. I have had the tendency to be a bit… erratic after regenerations." He glanced at her sideways. "Aren't you worried about me having left you here?"

"Not really. I figure even if he doesn't come back right away, you can still take me home."

"Might take a while. The TARDIS isn't really up to traveling right now."

She shrugged. "I'm in no rush," she told him.

~oOo~

The twelfth Doctor and Rose walked out of the TARDIS and found themselves in the same exact spot as where they had been when they had left. He took her hand and they slowly and reluctantly began to walk towards the park.

"How long do you think we've been gone?" she asked.

"I think it's probably still the same day. You would have received more telephone calls from Jackie if we had been longer than that." _Not to mention from me_ , he thought.

Just as they began to emerge from the alley, Rose pulled him to a stop, wrapped her arms around him and pulled his head down to hers. Remembering what he had implied about her relationship with his younger self, she wasn't satisfied with a simple kiss. Running her fingers through his hair, she deliberately deepened it and he responded, crushing her to himself as if he never wanted to let her go. When she finally pulled away, he met her eyes.

"Rose, I need to ask you something," he said. "And I need you to be completely honest."

She nodded. "Okay."

"What do you think of the hair?" he asked seriously.

Taken aback at the unexpected question, she stared at him for a moment.

"What?" she asked in confusion.

"My hair," he said, trying, and failing, to hide a smile. "It's something I wondered ever since I regenerated. What would Rose Tyler think of my hair?"

She burst out laughing.

"I think it's… fantastic," she said sincerely, and he grinned at her.

On the far side of the park, as soon as he heard the sound of the TARDIS materializing, the tenth Doctor jumped up off the park bench but before he could cross the park he saw Rose walk out of the alley hand in hand with an older man. They had a casual intimacy about them that would be apparent to anyone who saw them. As they walked, Rose's upper arm brushed his, and her head rested against his shoulder.

Clara came and stood next to him.

"That's me?" he asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the pair.

"Yeah," Clara answered. "That's Rose?"

He nodded sharply and as they watched, the two on the other side of the park stopped and shared a passionate embrace. The Doctor's eyebrows shot up so high they got lost in his fringe.

Clara smirked. "I _knew_ that the TARDIS was a snog box," she said.

He shot her a look before turning back to watch… himself… with Rose. Even knowing that she was kissing his future self, he felt an overwhelming wave of jealousy. It was mixed with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. She wouldn't leave him, would she? For a later version of himself? Based on what he was witnessing, it suddenly seemed like a possibility.

The Doctor saw the couple finally break apart and saw his older self say something to Rose that he couldn't hear. Her laughter rang out across the park. She reached up and ruffled his hair and then spotted him and Clara. She and his older self began to cross over to them.

Clara in tow, he stalked up to them and met them halfway. With a smirk, the older Doctor draped his arm around Rose's shoulder possessively and the Doctor in pinstripes felt another wave of jealousy, this time tinged with no small amount of anger.

"What were you thinking?" he demanded of his older self.

"Good to see you too," the older Doctor said sarcastically.

"Crossing our timeline, interfering with your own past," he continued, ignoring the other Doctor's comments. "Taking Rose out of her proper timeline. You could have caused a paradox."

"But I didn't," he answered coolly.

"You almost did," he retorted. "And you still could."

Rose shook the older Doctor's arm off her shoulders and looked worriedly from one Doctor to the other. "You said you could prevent a paradox if you were careful," she said to the older Doctor.

The younger Doctor snorted. "You told her that?" He glared at his older self. "I must become senile in my old age, because running off with Rose is about as far from being careful as you could get. Do you have any idea of the damage you've caused? Clara has even begun forgetting things."

"What do you mean?" the other Doctor asked sharply.

"When she first got here, she knew who Rose was, and then she didn't. She spent the whole afternoon with Jackie, and then neither of them could remember it. Somehow something you did changed Clara's past, and ours as well."

"Well, we're back now," he answered. "Things should have righted themselves." He turned to Clara. "Have you remembered what you've forgotten?"

"Putting aside the fact that since I don't remember what I've forgotten, I don't know if I remember it now," she answered, "I still don't remember having tea with Jackie or how I knew who Rose was before."

The Doctors exchanged glances.

"Bringing Rose back wasn't enough to restore the timeline," the younger Doctor said. "And if the timeline wasn't restored, the changes will escalate again."

"What does that mean?" Rose asked.

"It means that from the point of the initial change, things will continue to change. Let's say that because of Clara, I decide to have a ham sandwich. If she's not there, I may decide not to have lunch at all and have tea on Barcelona that evening instead. Then I get to talking to someone, which delays me from attending a museum opening. Eventually those minute changes will add up, and I risk not meeting someone in the basement of a shop in London."

"Causing a paradox," she said slowly.

"It's more than that," Clara interjected. "I saved his life. The changes could prevent me from meeting him, and I wouldn't be able to do that."

"I've already begun feeling the effects of the changes," he told his older self. "And eventually you will as well."

"Can we fix this?" Rose asked.

"Yes," he said. "There's only one thing that would."

"No," the older Doctor said sharply. "I won't permit it. There must be another way."

"There isn't," he insisted. "It's the only way, and you know it. And we have to do it soon or we run the risk of the timeline continuing to deteriorate and the changes becoming permanent."

Rose turned to the older Doctor.

"And you knew this?" she asked. "You risked that for me?"

He met her eyes.

"I'd risk anything for you," he answered quietly.

She stared at him for a moment and then shook her head. She turned back to the younger Doctor.

"But you said there's a way to fix this, yeah?" She looked from one Doctor to the other. "What would?" she asked. Neither Doctor answered her. "What would?" she repeated insistently.

"You'd have to forget," the younger Doctor said. "We both would have to forget everything that happened today. That's the only way to prevent the changes in the timeline that have already occurred. I can make myself forget this, but I'd have to go into your mind to erase yours."

Rose pursed her lips and nodded decisively.

"I'll do it," she said to him. "If it prevents a paradox and saves your life, I'd always do it."

As the Doctor in pinstripes moved towards her, his older self stopped him.

"No!" he barked. "I will do it. The temptation would be overwhelming for you to peek at her memories. Some things should remain private, even from you."

The younger Doctor stared wide-eyed from his older self to Rose and back again.

"Sounds like the TARDIS was a shag box as well as a snog box," Clara said under her breath, only loud enough for the younger Doctor to hear. He shot her a dark look.

"Shut up, Clara," he whispered back angrily.

While the tenth Doctor and Clara watched, the twelfth Doctor led Rose to the park bench where they had sat earlier. Her eyes were full of tears.

"I'm sorry about this," he said softly.

She sniffed and shook her head vigorously. "No, don't be sorry. I wouldn't have missed it for the world, even if I won't remember it." She paused for a moment and then said, "So what do I have to do?"

"Just close your eyes," he said softly. When she did, he continued. "I'm going to place my fingertips on your temples and I'm gently going to enter your mind. I won't look at anything other than the hours we spent together."

She nodded. Closing his own eyes, he leaned forward, rested his forehead on hers and gently touched her temples.

_Can you hear me?_ he asked silently.

"Yes," she whispered.

He smiled. _No, you can say it in your mind, Rose. I'll hear you._

_Okay_ , she responded.

_Before we start, I want, I need to tell you something. I'm not going to erase your memories._

_But… I thought you had to make me forget._

But… I thought you had to make me forget.

_You will forget… for a time. But I'm a selfish old man, Rose, and I can't bear the thought you'd never remember our time together. So I'm going to lock up your memories and someday, when all risk of a paradox is past, you'll remember again._

At the Doctor's mental prodding, they recalled their time together. The meteor shower at Woman Wept. Dancing in New New Orleans. And _dancing_ in the TARDIS. And after each memory was examined, he helped her carefully stow it away like the treasure it was.

_These memories will be like a quickly forgotten dream, fading as the minutes pass. But I want you to always remember one thing. Remember deep down in your heart that I love you, even if I don't tell you again until we are on a deserted beach farther away than you could possibly imagine._

Finally when they were done, he moved one of his hands from her temple to cup her cheek. When she opened her eyes, he whispered to her, "In moments you'll forget you met me, but before that happens…"

He leaned forward and tenderly pressed his lips to hers, at the same time mentally urging her to sleep. She slumped towards him, and he gently laid her on the bench.

He stood and faced Clara.

"I want you to go back to the TARDIS," he said. "I have to talk to him for a minute, and I'd rather do it in private."

She glared at him but turned and walked back to their TARDIS.

"Where did you find her?" the Doctor in pinstripes asked. "I never thought I'd meet someone who actually listened."

"Oh, around," he replied evasively.

The younger Doctor looked his older self up and down. "I wouldn't have thought I'd go so old again," he said critically. "And what's with the Scottish accent? I thought we were done with that after our seventh life."

"Actually, we went younger last time, and I needed a change," he said mildly, but there was a sharp edge under the words. "Besides, Rose seemed to like it. A lot." He smirked. "Oh, and the accent, too."

The younger Doctor glared at his older self.

"And you're one to criticize," he continued. "Pinstripes and plimsolls? What _was_ I thinking? Although the brown _is_ better than the blue."

"Blue?" the tenth Doctor asked in confusion. "I don't have a blue suit."

"Don't get one. You look ridiculous in it, particularly with the red trainers."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're one to talk, wearing that," he said, gesturing at his older self.

"I happen to like it."

"You would," he said contemptuously. He paused, and then, "What did you want to talk about?"

"How long were we gone?"

The younger Doctor scanned his Time Sense. His eyes widened.

"Five… and a half hours," he said slowly.

The older Doctor raised one eyebrow and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Really? Now why doesn't that surprise me?"

In the distance, the TARDIS in the alley made a groaning sound like it was about to take off. As they both glanced in that direction, it stopped and the younger TARDIS echoed the sound. Puzzled, the younger Doctor turned and looked sharply in the direction of his own TARDIS.

"What are you talking about?" the younger Doctor asked as he turned back.

"Was I _really_ so thick when I was you? No wonder I lost–"

He stopped abruptly, and the pinstriped Doctor's eyes narrowed.

"Lost what?" he asked.

"Everything," his older self said simply. He paused for a moment, allowing that to sink in before continuing.

"It hurt, didn't it, wondering where she was, not knowing when or even if she would come back to you. And don't forget, when you left Rose and Mickey on that spaceship to go gallivanting off with the uncrowned Queen of France, you didn't just abandon them. You abandoned the TARDIS as well. When you make yourself forget, don't forget that. You almost lost everything important to you. And you _still_ might lose Rose if you aren't careful."

" _You_ risked us never meeting Rose in the first place by going off with her! Honestly, what were you thinking? You could have damaged the timelines beyond repair!"

"Until you wear these shoes, you'll have no idea what you'd risk. You'd do anything, risk anything short of tearing two universes apart under the right circumstances. Especially for Rose. And you know it."

Despite being slightly shorter, he still managed to look down his nose at his younger self.

"You truly disgust me," he said, his lip curling in derision. "You are wasting what little precious time you have with her. You know your time with her is limited; you told her that yourself with all that crap about the curse of the Time Lords. Instead of distancing yourself, you should be cherishing every single moment, treasuring every one of her heart beats, because some day, much sooner than you think, you won't have a chance anymore and it will almost destroy you.

"I know you're not going to remember any of this, but I have a few things to say to you. First of all, use your brain. Don't just rely on holding on with your hands when you are at risk of getting sucked into the Void. Use a harness and make sure Rose wears one as well. And find that hand of yours and dispose of it properly. You know better than to let an entire hand with Time Lord DNA in it float around where just anyone can get to it. Besides, who knows what Jack has been doing with it." He shuddered.

"What does Jack have to do with…"

His older self interrupted him. "Stay away from The Library; you're just _asking_ for a world of hurt. And as far as that goes, don't travel with couples on their honeymoon. Believe me, she'd be much better off. They all would.

"When you are in a bombed out street full of Daleks, pay attention to what's going on around you, or at least do a better job of ducking. And if you ever get into a situation where you have to enter a chamber filled with radiation to save someone else's life, have Jack do it instead. You know it won't kill him, at least not permanently."

He turned to leave, but before he had taken more than a few steps, he turned back.

"And for God's sake," he said, shaking his finger at his younger self, "stay away from Queen Elizabeth."

__


	11. Chapter Eleven

The twelfth Doctor hurried back to the TARDIS. Once inside, he slammed the door closed, strode past Clara and flipped a series of switches on the console. As the Time Rotor began to rise and lower, he began to quickly pace back and forth on the narrow walkway in front of the console.

"Doctor…" Clara began tentatively, "are you alright?"

"No!" he said, almost shouting. "No, of course I'm not alright! Do I look alright to you?"

She wasn't afraid of him, but she still cringed slightly at the outpouring of emotion currently being directed at her. She knew he wasn't angry with her, but it still felt like it.

"Doctor, I just wanted to say I'm sorry…"

"Not now, Clara!" He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to regain some semblance of control. "Just…" he began more quietly. "Just go away."

She nodded and headed up the stairs to the door that led into the rest of the TARDIS. And as she slipped from the room, he sank down onto the stairs and rested his head in his hands.

~oOo~

The tenth Doctor slowly regained consciousness, feeling the grating of the floor of the console room cutting painfully into his scalp. He tried to shift to relieve some of the pain and realized it was also uncomfortably poking into his back, despite the fact that he was wearing both an Oxford shirt and a Henley under his brown pinstriped jacket.

He opened his eyes to find himself looking at the underside of the console, wires loose above his head, his sonic screwdriver beside him. From his position on the floor as well as the partially disconnected pieces of console above him, it appeared that he had been tracing the line that led from the controls on the console through the temporal relay on to the magnotomic thrust activator and had somehow… fallen asleep.

"What?" he said aloud.

More than slightly disoriented, he sat up too quickly and hit his head on the underside of the console.

"Ow," he said, wincing and rubbing the sore spot with the heel of his hand. "That's gonna leave a mark."

His head pounding, he moved out from underneath the console, careful not to hit his head again, and gingerly sat down on the jump seat. How could he have fallen asleep while working on the TARDIS? He only rarely slept, and when he did, it was just to take a kip on his bed or in the reclining chair in the library. He had never fallen asleep while working on the TARDIS, not in all the centuries he had been traveling.

Wondering how long he had been out, he checked his internal clock and discovered he had been unconscious for six hours.

"What?" he exclaimed, and winced again at the pain that shot through his head.

Being unconscious for six hours was almost unheard of for him. Usually he could measure the time he would sleep in minutes, not hours. It was extremely rare for him to sleep more than three hours over the course of several weeks. To sleep six, he would normally have had to be severely injured and have put himself in a healing coma.

The Doctor looked inwardly again but could find no sign of recent injury. It was a mystery, and although he normally liked a good mystery, he didn't like one when it was involving him.

Suddenly he remembered the conversation he had been having in the park with Rose minutes—no, more like six hours—ago. He had told her he was going to work on the TARDIS, and she said she'd be along in a little while. But she wasn't here. Why wasn't she here yet?

She must be at her mum's, he decided.

He rushed out of the TARDIS, headed to Jackie's flat, barely glancing at the park as he walked through it. And stopped. He had missed something; he knew it. He turned around slowly. And saw blonde hair falling over the edge of a park bench near the children's playground.

"Rose," he whispered, and ran full out back across the park.

She was lying down on the bench, and much to his relief, she was simply asleep.

"Rose," he said, jiggling her shoulder. "Rose, wake up."

Her eyes slowly opened and she yawned widely, only at the last moment covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Oh, hello," she said after she realized the Doctor was crouched next to her.

"Hello," he said, smiling back.

She yawned again and sat up, and the Doctor sat down next to her on the bench.

"Musta fallen asleep," she said, stating the obvious. "Haven't been sleepin' well lately, but I didn't realize I was tired enough to fall asleep in the park. Do you know how long I was out?"

"Did you go anywhere after we were talking earlier?"

She shook her head. "No. Just here."

"That was six hours ago."

Her eyes flew open wide. "Six hours?" she asked incredulously.

The Doctor nodded. "And what's odd about all of this is that I was asleep for about six hours as well."

"You?" The Doctor sleeping six hours was even more shocking to her than her sleeping on a park bench that long. Her brow furrowed thoughtfully. "Well, if we both slept that long, did it have anythin' to do with the Void?" she asked.

"You mean a delayed reaction as a result of crossing the Void?" he asked thoughtfully and then nodded again. "Possibly, possibly, probably even, although I've never heard of that being a side effect of Void travel." He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned them both, and then frowned. The readings were inconclusive. "But with both of us having the same reaction, it seems the most likely possibility. Still… what was the last thing you remember before you fell asleep?"

"Hmm, talkin' to you, I guess. We were right over there." She gestured vaguely with her hand at a direction on the opposite side of the park from her mother's flat. She paused thoughtfully. "Then I came over here because I didn't want to go back to the flat and hear Mum complain about the washer again. Let's see… I was sittin' here, watchin' the kids, and then…"

"And then you decided to take a kip on a park bench?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

She ignored his tone. "No. I was talkin' to someone." She scrunched up her face, trying to remember. "Oh! I know. An older man came over and sat next to me, and we talked for a bit. He was really nice."

"Do you remember anything about him? What he looked like. His name, perhaps."

She shook her head slowly. "I think his name was… Harry somethin'. Harry Sampson, Stanton, somethin' with an 'S' at any rate. Oh! I know! Sullivan. Harry Sullivan."

He stared at her. He had had a companion by that name. "His name was Harry Sullivan? Are you sure?"

She shrugged. "That's what he said."

"What did he look like?"

"I dunno." Her brow furrowed and she closed her eyes to try and picture him. To her surprise, she could recall him almost perfectly. "Tall, skinny, greying hair, mid-fifties maybe. Bit of an accent. Kinda Northern sounding. Maybe even Scottish." Eyes still closed, she bit her lip and without realizing it she started to grin. Her voice became quieter, as if she was talking to herself. "Had these intense blue-grey eyes. Really, really gorgeous eyes. And a great smile…"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and tried to ignore a small—okay, not so small—wave of jealousy. Return to the topic at hand, he told himself. The age was right for the Harry he knew, give or take a few years, but the rest of the description didn't match Harry at all. Well, it wasn't as if Harry Sullivan was an uncommon name, he told himself.

"Anything else?" the Doctor asked, wanting to change the subject. He stood up and pulled her to her feet.

"Nope. We just talked and then…" Her voice trailed off as she suddenly remembered kissing him. She could feel her face grow warm. "And then he must have left and I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew you were waking me up." She shook her head. "No, that's not right. I had some really weird dreams. All about Woman Wept and jazz music and birds…" Her eyes flew wide open as she remembered the rest of the dream. Harry had been in it, and it had been very… intense. She felt herself blush clear to her roots, something she rarely if ever did, and the Doctor gave her a strange look.

"Let's go back to the TARDIS," he suggested. To her relief, he didn't mention her blushing. "The lights were on when I left. Definite progress. Unless you want to go back to your mother's flat?" His tone indicated that that was the last thing he wanted to do.

She shook her head, and her loose hair swung slightly back and forth. The Doctor cocked his head at her and looked at her curiously.

"Wasn't your hair up before?"

Rose's hand flew to her hair. "Yeah, it was. Huh. I don't remember taking it down. Maybe the band fell off when I was asleep." She bent down and looked for it around and under the bench. "Nope. Not here. Weird." She shrugged her shoulders. "I've got others."

He grabbed her hand, her left in his right, and they started towards the TARDIS. As they walked, Rose felt a bit of a twinge in a very personal place. That was some dream, she thought. It really must have been too long since the last time she had shagged. She had never had a dream that caused _that_ reaction before.

The Doctor looked at her oddly again. "Are you alright?"

"Yep," she said, perhaps a bit too quickly and a bit too loudly. "Just a little stiff from sleeping on the bench, I think."

He nodded, obviously accepting her explanation, and inwardly she sighed in relief.

Once at the TARDIS, the Doctor strode inside. Rose began to follow, and stopped just inside the door. She looked around herself in puzzlement. For some unknown reason, something seemed… off. When he realized she was no longer following him, he turned and looked at her questioningly.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Dunno," she answered. "'S just… y'know when you're thirsty and you grab your cup to take a sip of water, but it's not your cup and the person whose cup it was was drinking something totally different, like Coke or something, and it's kinda like a shock cos you weren't expecting it? 'S kinda like that." At his puzzled expression, she continued. "I mean, this is the TARDIS. This is what it looks like. But it was almost like I expected it to look different. And I don't know why."

She crossed over to sit on the jump seat, and he sat down next to her. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver to scan her again, and she scowled at him.

"I'm fine," she told him firmly.

"I know," he said, looking at the readings on his sonic rather than at her. "According to this, there's nothing wrong with you. It's just been an odd day, I guess." He shrugged and crossed to the console, but before he could crawl back under it to work on it some more, Rose stopped him.

He was facing the console, his hands resting on its top and his back to her. Perfect for what she wanted to say to him, because she didn't know if she'd have the guts to say anything while he was looking at her.

"Doctor, when I was talking to Harry in the park," she said tentatively, "I, uh, I told him that after the last couple of weeks I really needed a break…"

At her words, he froze. The sounds of his hearts pounded in his ears.

"But I was afraid that if I asked for one you'd leave and not come back," she continued. "Harry told me I really needed to talk to you about it."

He turned to face her.

"Rose, how could you think I wouldn't come back for you?"

"What about Sarah Jane? You left her behind," she said pointedly, and inwardly he winced. "And what about Mickey? We left him behind, and you acted like you didn't even care."

"Oh, Rose," the Doctor said, sitting down next to her on the jump seat, "people leave me all the time, and it always hurts. I've just gotten very good at hiding it over the centuries." He took her hand and intertwined their fingers. "Mickey needed to feel needed, and in Pete's World he is."

Rose sniffed, trying not to cry, and nodded. "You're right about that. Ever since his Gran died, he's been just kinda floatin' through life with no direction." She smiled sadly. "Y'know, goin' to work and then either watching the match at the pub or havin' beans on toast while watchin' telly at home."

"Mickey is going to be brilliant in Pete's World," he told her, and she nodded.

"But what about Sarah Jane?" she asked. "Micks wanted to go, but she didn't."

"It was her time to go," he answered. "But I told you, I'd never do that to you."

"But you did," she said. "Just last week. You left Micks and me on a spaceship who knows where or when without any way of getting back."

He opened his mouth to reply, but she continued.

"I know you had to save her, I get that, I really do, especially given how you felt for her, but you just… left us."

She expected him to make excuses, to try and justify his decision. To her surprise, he didn't.

"I'm sorry, Rose," he said instead. "I'm so, so sorry. I can't imagine what it was like for you not knowing when or even if I was going to be able to get back.

"But as far as how I felt about her," he continued, "it wasn't what you're obviously thinking. I had admired Reinette for a long time, and when she showed an interest in me I was very, very flattered. She saw me as a hero, and I wanted to believe that that's what I was."

"So you're saying that essentially you were a fanboy with a crush and delusions of grandeur, and you set out to prove you were a hero by ridin' in on a white horse," she said slowly, a puzzled expression on her face. Even as the words came out of her mouth, Rose was almost overcome with a sense of déjà vu.

The Doctor gaped at her.

"Well, that's certainly one way of putting it," he said. "And probably more accurate than I'd like to admit." He was quiet for a moment and looked down at their joined hands. With his thumb, he stroked the back of her hand. "You know, after I saved her, I realized that by going through that window I had risked everything I care about in the universe."

She stared at him, not sure if he was saying what she thought he was saying, but he wouldn't look at her.

She bit her lip, a nervous habit she had developed as a child and that she had never been able to break. There was one more thing she wanted to talk to him about, but she wasn't sure she should. It would be better to just let things lie, she told herself. Status quo.

But some things were worth getting your heart broken over. Sarah Jane herself had told her that, and Rose knew the older woman had meant it, even though the Doctor had left her behind. Maybe this was one of them.

"Y'know, Harry said one other thing," she told him. She looked down at their hands as well, unable to look him in the face even though he wasn't looking at her. "He called you my boyfriend. Somethin' about the way he thought you looked at me. That's a laugh, isn't it? You, my boyfriend? I told him you didn't feel that way about me." She paused for a moment before continuing. "You don't, do you?" She said it more as a statement than as a question.

He didn't respond immediately, and she instantly regretted bringing it up.

"No, I don't," he said eventually.

Her heart sank. She knew that she shouldn't have said anything. It was a nice little fantasy that they were together, but that's all it was. A fantasy.

But then to her surprise, with his free hand he tilted up her chin and met her eyes. He swallowed nervously before continuing. "But that's just because that word is just _so_ inadequate for describing how I feel about you."

Her jaw dropped and she stared at him. "Yeah?"

He nodded and gently caressed her face with his fingertips. "Yeah."

He leaned forward and their lips met. And as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, she closed her eyes and melted into his embrace.


	12. Chapter Twelve -- Epilogue

Once the TARDIS was in the Vortex, the Time Rotor stopped moving. The Doctor had not programmed in any destination coordinates, so there the TARDIS hung, so to speak, neither here nor there, not in any particular where or when.

The console room was silent save for the ever-present quiet hum of the TARDIS itself and the sound of the Doctor's own breathing. Sounds that seemed overly loud to him at the moment.

The Doctor sat, head in hands, on the stairs that led from the console area to the upper ring that circled the room. Deep down, from the minute he had asked her to come with, no from the second he had seen her across the park, he knew it had to end the way that it had. He had known he would have to give her up yet again, but somehow he hadn't been prepared for how much it would hurt.

And oh, how it hurt.

It always hurt when people left, but there was a separate level of pain in losing Rose, a ripping of his soul that he knew now he'd never fully recover from, no matter how many regenerations he had, no matter how long he lived.

But as he sat there, he suddenly felt an unmistakable tingle in his skin. He looked up sharply, eyes wide with shock as new memories filtered through to him, coming to rest alongside his original ones.

The timeline had shifted.

THE TIMELINE HAD SHIFTED.

But why had it shifted?

His mind raced as he recalled the events of the last 24 hours. Bringing Rose back to her correct time and locking away her memories as well as those of his younger self should have restored the timeline to its original one. But when he had locked Rose's memories away, he had had to leave her memories of knowing him as Harry. Her meeting him was part of the original timeline, part of the original time loop that had brought him to the Powell Estate in the first place. But in locking up her memories, he had forgotten to smudge the memory of him calling his younger self her boyfriend, which was the thing that had caused the first timeline shift.

And she had remembered him saying it. And time had shifted.

From the moment of their first real kiss in the console room, things were different between them. No longer content to just be best friends, their relationship grew closer and more intimate by the day. They had tried to take things slow, but simple kisses quickly gave way to explorations with hands and lips and tongues. Until finally, on an impossible planet circling a black hole, they made love for the first time.

Originally, the Doctor remembered, they had only had months together after Krop Tor. But now they had had years. Instead of returning to the Powell Estate every few weeks to see Jackie, they spent months—once even a year—between visits, time together they hadn't had in the original timeline.

And a year after his visit to the Powell Estate, alone on a distant planet with sky rays circling overhead, his younger self and Rose had committed themselves to spending the rest of her life together. She had promised him forever, and he had promised never to leave her. It hadn't been a formal ceremony, but to them it had been as binding as any marriage could be.

Unfortunately, in the new timeline, despite his gob, despite the extra time together, despite everything that had changed between them, he still had never been able to articulate the words to tell her how he felt about her. Somehow, though, she had always known he loved her.

But then the Cybermen came. And he still lost her.

As had happened in the original timeline, he had sent her away to protect her, and she had returned, refusing to leave him. But this time, instead of arguing with her, he had quickly made harnesses for them to wear while the Void was open. But Rose had accidentally slipped out of hers. And as it had happened originally, she had been caught by Pete and trapped in the parallel universe.

Some things were fixed points, and evidently losing Rose at Canary Wharf was one of them.

Losing her had come close to destroying him, and if it weren't for Martha and Donna, he might have given up.

Eventually he met up with Jack again and retrieved his hand. For some reason he didn't understand, he wasn't surprised that Jack had had it, although the thought of his hand being in Jack's possession made him slightly queasy. As soon as he had gotten it back he had had a niggling feeling in the back of his mind that he should dispose of it, but he figured it was safe enough sitting under the console of the TARDIS, and besides, he loved his hand. If nothing else, it was a wonderful conversation piece.

Despite a deep sense of unease, he still went to the Library, telling himself that if he stopped going places that he felt uneasy about, he'd never go anywhere. The trip ended the same way as it had originally, because his Eleventh self had still taken Amy and Rory on a honeymoon trip.

Well, he had never said that his Tenth self had a monopoly on idiocy.

But then after the Library the Earth had been stolen and Rose had returned.

But in his joy of seeing her again he still didn't duck, and his meta-crisis self had been created out of the spare hand he had kept under the console.

The beach on Bad Wolf Bay in the parallel Norway was just as painful in the new timeline as in the original.

He hadn't wanted to leave her on Pete's World, but he had felt he had no other choice. His meta-crisis self was him as well. But she hadn't understood that.

_"That's me when we first met," he said, willing her to understand._

_"But it's not right," she said. "Because the Doctor's... still you."_

_"And I'm him," he told her._

_He thought she finally understood when she stopped him and asked them both what they would have said the last time she had been on that beach._

_"I said 'Rose Tyler'," he told her._

_"Yeah, and how was that sentence gonna end?"_

_"Does it need saying?" he asked._

_"And you, Doctor?" she said to his meta-crisis self. "What was the end of that sentence?"_

_He saw his other self bend towards her to whisper in her ear._

_And then things changed again._

_Her jaw dropped and a puzzled expression came over her face. She stared at each of them in turn, and then slowly shook her head. And then as she briefly kissed his meta-crisis self he turned to walk to the TARDIS._

_And she stopped him._

_"Doctor, wait!"_

_He froze. In front of him, already at the TARDIS door stood Donna, waiting for him, and he heard Rose's footsteps run up behind him. He knew he needed to leave, but he had never been able to deny Rose Tyler anything. He saw Donna nod. He steeled himself, putting on an emotionless mask before turning back to her. Over her shoulder, he saw his meta-crisis self still standing where she had left him, looking nervous and confused._

_"Rose, please don't make this any harder than it already is," he said, unable to stop his voice from breaking. "You can't stay with both of us, and he is me."_

_"I know," she said. "You told me yourself, a long time ago, although I didn't understand what you meant at the time. You said to me, 'Remember deep down in your heart that I love you, even if I don't tell you again until we are on a deserted beach farther away than you could possibly imagine.'" She turned and looked at the Doctor in blue before turning back to him._

_"I don't remember ever saying that," he told her._

_"It's alright," she said. "You will."_

_She crossed the distance between them and laid a hand on his face. "You weren't even going to let me say goodbye?" she asked._

_He hadn't thought his shattered hearts could break further, but he had been wrong._

_"Don't make me say goodbye to you."_

_She shook her head. "It's not goodbye for you," she said. "You'll see me again."_

_"Rose, once I leave, the walls of the universe will be sealed, and you won't be able to come back again."_

_"You will see me again," she told him. "I promise."_

_"You can't promise that," he said._

_"Yes, I can. Because it's already happened for me."_

_His jaw dropped, and he stared at her. Then she stood on her tiptoes, pulled his head down to hers and kissed him. Unable to stop himself, he wrapped his arms around her and sank into the kiss. But when the TARDIS groaned, reminding them that the cracks between the dimensions were sealing, she let go of him and took a few steps backwards. And he saw his meta-crisis self step forward to join her before he turned and walked back to the TARDIS._

Her words changed things. Despite losing her, in the new timeline he now had hope, where originally there had only been hopelessness. The hope of seeing her again kept him from feeling sorry for himself and from making some of the mistakes he had in the original timeline.

He didn't isolate himself as he had originally. He didn't travel with anyone, but he did visit Mickey and Martha. And Sarah Jane. And Jack.

He didn't stay away from Queen Elizabeth, but he didn't marry her either. Or anyone else.

And he never went to Mars.

He still gave his life to save Wilf, but this time he didn't rant and whinge about it.

And true to her word, he did see her again.

And then again right before he regenerated.

And ever so briefly in his eleventh life.

And each time he had seen her he thought, _this, this is what she meant._

But she hadn't.

She had meant _this_ time. With _this_ him.

But then again, maybe she hadn't, he thought to himself. He had been wrong before. Maybe he would see her yet again. After all, Rose Tyler ate impossible for breakfast.

And with that hope he felt the darkness of this regeneration recede a bit.

Because, he reminded himself, even a Time Lord didn't always know the future.


End file.
